How 856 dynamite sticks reduced the Stardust Resort to a mammoth pile of rubble

By TONY ILLIIA

Once the site of the most notorious 'skim' in Vegas history, the venerable Stardust Resort & Casino went down in a plume of dust on the Las Vegas Strip at 2:30 a.m., March 13. The 16-year-old, 315-foot-tall hotel tower and an adjacent, 43-year-old,nine-story low-rise were imploded using 428 pounds of explosives. It took just 10 seconds for the twin buildings, representing decades of history, to tumble, leaving a broad cloud of dust.

The 49-year-old hotel casino had closed Nov. 1, 2006. Boyd Gaming Corp., Stardust's parent company, is building a $4.4 billion, 10.5 million-square-foot development called Echelon Place on the 63-acre, Strip-front property. LVI Services of New York, was the demolition contractor, with Controlled Demolition, from Phoenix, Md., as explosives subcontractor.

The Stardust now becomes the fourth-tallest building ever imploded, trailing the 439-foot-tall J.L. Hudson department store in Detroit, which went down on Oct., 24, 1998. The Stardust, however, is still the tallest Strip tower ever imploded. It's also the sixth local implosion for LVI Services. Other notches on the company's belt include the previous Aladdin, the El Rancho, the Sands, the Desert Inn and the Castaways.

They snuck this one in at an hour when I was in bed, and they made no prior announcement, otherwise I would have been there for sure. The only evidence I saw of it was the dust cloud hanging over the entire city for the next 24 hours....

But, really. Where else in the world does an implosion look like this??