County Approves Hard Rock’s Bigass Guitar Hotel Tower

By Scott Roeben, on March 22 2023
4 min read 12 comments
Las Vegas Las Vegas Hotels

Clark County, wherein the Las Vegas Strip sits, has approved Hard Rock’s larger-than-life, guitar-shaped hotel tower.

Hard Rock International, of course, purchased the operations of Mirage, and the resort will be Mirage until Hard Rock finishes its renovation—including construction of the new tower—sometime in 2025.

The tower will sit on the site of the Mirage volcano. Cue the wailing and gnashing of teeth.

“Down in front!” ~Treasure Island

Yes, a few folks are bemoaning the loss of the volcano, but most of them haven’t actually visited the free attraction since 1994.

Vegas moves forward. We don’t ruminate or dwell. We don’t pine. We don’t bemoan. Stardust excluded, but that’s entirely different. Just because, that’s why.

Anyhoo, Hard Rock’s guitar tower will be 660 feet tall and will have 600 suites.

It’s said the shape of guitars were inspired by women’s bodies, yet many are difficult for women to play, breastwise.

The new hotel tower won’t just be a new source of revenue for Hard Rock International, it will also be a spectacle. The Florida version is sparkly and there’s a light show with music and the whole nine. Here’s more on the Hard Rock site.

The guitar tower is mesmerizing and Las Vegas needs one, stat. (Today we learned “stat” comes from the Latin word, “statim,” meaning “immediately.” If we have to learn things, you’re damn well going to learn them, too.)

Here’s how it’s described on the Hard Rock Web site: “The Guitar Hotel Light Show is a daily spectacular featuring a series of orchestrated outdoor music and lights showcasing the LED lights built into all sides of the brand-new and immaculate The Guitar Hotel. The lights are programmed to change color and intensity and are choreographed to different songs. Six high-powered beams of light accentuate the production by projecting at least 20,000 feet into the sky. The six lights mimic the strings of an imaginary guitar neck.”

At the Florida location, Jennifer Lopez has her own light show, confirming Hard Rock expects to recoup its investment on the back end.


The guitar hotel tower will be a symbol of the resort’s new brand. The Hard Rock brand, in case that weren’t clear.

Yes, that includes lots of rock memorabilia. A good deal of the memorabilia at the previous Hard Rock casino was included in the sale to Virgin, but two big truckloads were retained by Hard Rock. We trust much of that memorabilia will find its way back to Las Vegas, including the only item we really care about.

We called “dibs,” but apparently that’s not legally binding in Nevada. Go figure.

Hard Rock is owned by the Seminoles, making the resort the first casino on The Strip to be owned by a tribe. Vici Properties, a real estate investment trust, owns the land and physical assets (like buildings). Because Vici owns all the land on The Strip, pretty much.

Hard Rock’s rent is $90 million a year. Or, as it’s called in hotel-casino jargon, “a substantial nut.”

The San Manuel tribe was the first to own a casino in Las Vegas, the off-Strip Palms. Another tribe, Mohegan Sun, operates the casino at Virgin Las Vegas.

While 2025 seems forever away, it will be here before you know it, and if all goes according to plan (nobody’s really grappling with the potential of a looming glut of room supply, see also Fontainebleau), Las Vegas will have an iconic new photo op and experience to captivate people from around the world.

Here’s some inside baseball, plans showing the location of the new tower.

We’d say the tower will be fire, but that’ll just rile up the volcano diehards.

Here are some “fun” numbers from the resort’s proposal: There will be 48,234 square feet of casino, 96,668 square feet at street level to include restaurants and retail; 156,634 square feet for check in/pool level; 66,673 square foot spa, fitness center and salon; and 804,282 square feet of floor area associated with the hotel rooms.

We are including further details from Hard Rock’s proposal, mainly to improve our search engine rankings.

“The new Hard Rock hotel tower will be in the shape of a guitar and will contain 600 hotel rooms. There will be approximately 36 occupied room levels within the tower which will be built on top of a 105 foot tall podium. The total height of the project will be 542 feet to the top of the guitar and a maximum height of 660 feet for additional architectural features to mimic the neck of the guitar. The height/setback ratio requires 218 feet from Las Vegas Boulevard South where 59 feet is provided, necessitating a deviation. The porte-cochere for the project is accessed via existing driveways off Las Vegas Boulevard South. A valet drop-off area is provided at the porte-cochere for use by patrons of the resort hotel. All parking will be provided through existing adjacent parking garages (total of 3). Based upon the parking totals submitted with this request, a total of 6,166 parking spaces are provided between the Mirage Property and Treasure Island. With the addition of the new hotel tower and uses as well as the other existing uses, a total of 4,6340 parking spaces are required. The plans also depict the location of multiple ‘potential’ pedestrian bridges. Two of the proposed bridges are located on the west side of Las Vegas Boulevard South and would span across the existing vehicular driveways off Las Vegas Boulevard South. Also, as a point of information, the applicant has been working with The Boring Company for a proposed Vegas Loop station. Access to the project site is granted via 2 existing commercial driveways adjacent to Las Vegas Boulevard South. The existing driveways along Las Vegas Boulevard are not being modified with this project, though it is noted that these driveways do not meet current uniform standard drawing dimensions for entry/exit driveway radii, driveway widths, and throat depths. The intent of this project is to maintain the existing driveways.”

Here’s a side view of the tower, as well as a look at what the front of Hard Rock Las Vegas will look like when it opens.

There will not be an actual hole in the side of the guitar.

The Mirage volcano had its day, now, it’s time to strap in, take a whole step forward and slide into a whole new kind of action for the Las Vegas Strip.

Yes, we found a glossary of guitar terms on the Internet.

Let’s just say if Hard Rock Las Vegas doesn’t have a Whammy Bar, they’re leaving money on the table.

Let’s rock! Within reasonable decibel level limits, of course.