The landmark Mirage Volcano that spits fire outside the Mirage Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas will soon be extinguished forever!
Hard Rock International Chief Executive Officer Jim Allen confirmed plans to rebrand the resort and get rid of the entire front area.
A guitar-shaped hotel will take over, according to a recent rendering.
MGM Resorts International, the previous owner, said in a statement it will license The Mirage name and brand to Hard Rock for the next few years while the rebranding process continues.
Some are not happy with the decision to do away with the volcano. An online petition on change.org to save the Mirage volcano had gathered more than 1,500 signatures as of Monday.
In 2019, Hard Rock International expressed an interest in buying property on the Las Vegas Strip for a new Hard Rock resort, following the 2018 sale and proposed rebranding of the original Hard Rock Hotel in Las Vegas. In August 2021, Vici Properties agreed to purchase MGM Growth Properties, which owns the real estate beneath the Mirage. Three months later, MGM announced that it was in the early process of selling the Mirage’s casino operations. MGM Resorts already operated nine other resorts and was in the process of adding a tenth. CEO William Hornbuckle, who helped oversee the Mirage’s opening, said the resort “just fell pretty far down in the spectrum of how much in the capital we’d allocate to it in any given period of time in the near future. And so we just took a strategic decision to sell it”.
In December 2021, Hard Rock International announced that it would purchase Mirage’s operations for $1.075 billion. Under the deal, Hard Rock would enter a long-term lease agreement with Vici and would rebrand the Mirage as the Hard Rock Las Vegas. The sale is expected to be finalized during the second half of 2022. MGM will keep the “Mirage” name and will license it to Hard Rock for up to three years until the rebranding takes effect. The Mirage will receive a complete renovation as part of the rebranding, and Hard Rock intends to construct a 1,000-room guitar-shaped hotel tower on the property, like the Seminole Hard Rock in Florida. The Mirage’s volcano will be demolished to make way for the new tower.