Turning 50, Las Vegas's Tropicana Gets Juiced Up

Audiences "used to get all dressed up in evening gowns and mink stoles," says former showgirl Donna Hart. "Now people come in Levi's and shorts." (Photos By Jae C. Hong -- Associated Press)

LAS VEGAS -- Soon after the Tropicana Resort & Casino opened 50 years ago, it was dubbed the "Tiffany of the Strip" because of its manicured lawns, balconied rooms and elegant showroom. And years under mob control earned it a storied place in Nevada gambling lore.

Its 60-foot tulip-shaped fountain and tropical landscaping set the Tropicana apart from the cowboy-themed El Rancho and the space-age New Frontier, said longtime employee Rudy Spinosa, 82, who helped open the resort to 500 VIP guests on April 4, 1957.

"Definitely nothing came close to it," he said.

But years of mob skimming, run-ins with gambling regulators, and multiple management changes have taken their toll on the aging casino on what is one of the busiest corners of the Las Vegas Strip at Tropicana Avenue.

Even as it celebrates Tropicana's golden anniversary this weekend, new owner Columbia Entertainment is planning an upgrade that will cost up to $2.5 billion and rip up most of the existing resort. The company, based in Fort Mitchell, Ky., and an affiliate of Columbia Sussex Corp., acquired it in January through a $2.1 billion takeover of parent Aztar Corp.

"It's a relic of the past we admire and respect, and we would like to see it work out going forward, but I don't think it will," said Rich FitzPatrick, Columbia's senior vice president and chief financial officer. "It needs to be updated, it needs to be freshened."

It's a long-overdue upgrade for a casino whose grand opening was soon overshadowed by links to organized crime.

An assassination attempt on mob boss Frank Costello in New York in 1957 exposed his Las Vegas counting room ties. While Costello was hospitalized, police found a note in his pocket detailing the Tropicana's gross win for its first 24 days: $651,284.

"It was a public embarrassment for everybody involved," said David Schwartz, director of the Center for Gaming Research at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. The authorities, he said, "quietly forced the people connected . . . to sell it."

Other owners moved in, but hidden mob control continued through a different family, the Civellas, according to John L. Smith, author of "Sharks in the Desert."

"For the two decades that followed, and while other mob-owned joints showed record-high profits even after the skim, the Tropicana underperformed like a poodle in a vaudeville dog act who forgot why he was on stage," Smith wrote.

In 1959, the casino brought in the "Folies Bergere" showgirls show "directly from Paris." That's now the longest-running production show in the United States.