From Stardust to dust – this is how it ends. ‘The Legendary’ Stardust Resort & Casino Las Vegas is about to get levelled, and on its rubble shall rise a $4 billion hotel casino complex more qualified to join the territorial pissing contest on the Las Vegas Strip.

There are mixed reviews from the 51 year old property’s employees. Some concur it is the right time to pull the plug and move on. Others, the more sentimental, remain in disbelief that the literal wrecking ball is striking down a vintage-Vegas institution. Appropriately, there is a visiting frenzy accounting for crowds the size of which Stardust hadn’t enjoyed in decades. After all, Las Vegas is a city that knows how to turn loss and demise into spectacular merriment.

On the week The Temptations and The Four Tops were there, I hung around Stardust having $11 brunches at Coco Palms and $5 Java Coast cappuccinos. The last-hurrah sensation was unmistakable. The staff were peppier and easier to egg onto historical reminiscing. Slot tournaments at the 80,000 sqft Stardust Casino were neverending. Convention rooms buzzed with more action than they already had often.

When ‘Mr. Las Vegas’ Wayne Newton parted ways with Stardust last year, it had to mean impending doom. He had headlined the Stardust Theater (then named after him) for 40 weeks out of the year since 1999. Dammit, just when wireless Internet is finally available in this old-Vegas staple we’ve seen in every movie from Swingers to Showgirls, and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas in between.

Supposedly, employee shortage prompted property owners Boyd Gaming Corporation to schedule the closedown on November 1st, two months earlier than first planned. They will stop taking reservations on that day, continue operating until year end, and proceed with demolition next year.

Stardust casino hotel presently employs some 1,600 people, down about 200 since Boyd Gaming announced closure and gave them a year’s notice, both in January. Of the 900 non-union, unprotected workers, half wanted to stay with the company but change positions. Boyd Gaming is working to place them in its 11 other properties around Las Vegas. The rest are retiring or changing professions.

Security crew on a smoke break told me the end was a long time coming, that Stardust was looking less and less like any other Strip edifice, much plainer. They were stoked about Boyd Gaming’s 63-acre megaresort casino project on the site, and all the new condominiums and shopping malls being built to make sure Vegas stays on top of the game.

Boyd Gaming this year landed on Forbes Magazine as the best managed company in the category of Hotels, Restaurant and Leisure. Their ‘new Stardust’, called Echelon Place, promises to be an eclectic mix of four upscale hotels with 5,300 rooms, a 140,000 sqft casino, spas, theaters, a convention center, retail shopping outlets; set for completion by 2010. The first school of thought was excited about all the modernization going on.

The other school of thought, not so. Ladies wearing salon-colored, permed hair, hotel staff, took turns telling me how many years they’ve worked here, how they’ve aged along with Stardust. They shook their heads and sighed and said they will miss the old dog. Back in the day, this 1,500-room hotel boasted the world’s largest casino, largest swimming pool, and largest electric sign sporting 7,100 ft of neon.

Stardust Resort & Casino, on its last three months before downfall, is kind of just soaking it all in. William B’s Restaurant, named after Sam Boyd’s own son, is still a refuge for the famished and carnivorous. NFL betting tips and odds are alive and well at the 300-seat Stardust Sports & Race Book, ‘Home of the Official Las Vegas Line’. And I’ll be damned if the Strip will see the same sort of nickel-slot traffic of gamblers, not gawkers, past November.

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