Today we are talking about the history of the Landmark Casino that was in Las Vegas from the early 1960s, but didn't open until 1969, until finally closing in 1990. The Landmark was a building concept that hadn't really been seen before. Many would say that the Space Needle inspired the Landmark's building concept, but that's untrue since the Space Needle had just started construction a few months before the Landmark. At the beginning the Landmark was having financial problems. Construction starting in the early 1960s and the original opening year was supposed to be 1967. That unfortunately didn't happen and in 1968 Howard Hughes would buy the property for $17 million and an additional $3 million that were needed for refurbishing the guest rooms along with maintenance equipment etc. Hughes would make sure that the Landmark was going to open as it should and it did finally on July 1st of 1969. Opening night was a hit, so much so that there were constant traffic jams at Paradise and Convention Center Dr. People had been watching it get built for years and couldn't wait to go inside to finally check it out. It originally had two casino floors. One on the ground floor and an additional casino on the 27th/29th floors. There was a golden spiral staircase that lead you to that casino. The Landmark was seen in the background of many movies/TV shows such as Viva Las Vegas, Diamonds are Forever, Mars Attacks!, VEGA$ and more. After Hughes sold Hughes Tool Co and the Landmark it would get sold to the Summa Corp and then years later to a group of investors from the Midwest. They did well, but it didn't take long for the SEC to figure out that something was up. One of them was caught with over $32 million in embezzlements and shortly after they didn't have anything to the with the Landmark anymore. On January 2nd of 1990, the Landmark filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy after Morris' gaming license lapsed when the resort was $500,000 behind in taxes and penalties. There was an interested party thinking about buying the Landmark, but after an over two hour court hearing no bids were made on the property and within an hour of that hearing Gaming Control board agents arrived at the Landmark to oversee the shutting down of tables games. After closing the Landmark was seen with advertising banners along the tower for the COMDEX show in 1992 and was used in the 1994 film, Casino. Today the Las Vegas Convention Center West Hall occupies that space that the Landmark and Riviera once used to. It's a 1.4 million sq ft expansion to the original Convention Center and it includes 150,000 sq ft of dedicated meeting space and 600,000 sq ft of exhibit space. I hope you all enjoyed!

Please share your memories below so we can all look back on the amazing Landmark!

Here's the link:
https://youtu.be/YbypM4UuAHY