Aladdin to disappear on April 27

Wednesday, April 8, 1998 | 10:11 a.m.

When Aladdin rubbed his magic lamp, a genie appeared in a puff of smoke.

When wrecking crews set the charges at the 31-year-old Aladdin hotel-casino on the Strip it will disappear in a huge puff of smoke about 7:30 p.m. on April 27.

That's the date that the 17-story resort, once considered one of the most luxurious in town but long beset by financial woes, will be imploded. A new and larger Aladdin, complete with a mall and boasting a $1.3 billion price tag, will reappear on the spot within a couple of years, officials said.

"The event will be tied into a celebrity auction," said Rachel Wilkinson of Rogich Communications, spokescompany for the Aladdin. "That reception before the implosion will be by invitation only."

A list of the celebrities that will be invited was not immediately available. The event will benefit the Make-A-Wish Foundation of Southern Nevada, which grants requests for sick and terminally ill children.

The 7,000-seat Aladdin Theatre for the Performing Arts will be spared from the implosion. The hotel-casino, however, will join a growing list of historical Las Vegas sites to bite the dust.

The Dunes was imploded in October 1993. The Landmark came down in November 1995. The Sands Hotel was blasted a year later. The Hacienda was demolished in a New Year's Eve spectacle in 1996.

In addition to the new Aladdin, the property will include a yet-to-be-named resort built by Planet Hollywood International Inc.

The Sigman Sommer Family Trust, which owns the Aladdin, announced last September that it would close the property and lay off its nearly 1,500 employees.

Officials have said they will give those workers priority consideration when the new resort opens in late 1999 or early 2000.

The new resort will include a 2,600-room hotel at a cost of $700 million and a music-themed resort venture with Planet Hollywood at a cost of $250 million.

Retail and restaurant space, totaling 450,000 square feet, will cost an additional $215 million.

The Aladdin opened in 1966 on the site of the Tally-Ho Motel, which was built in 1963.

During its long and rocky tenure -- blamed in part on it being too far south of the hottest Strip action -- the resort struggled through lean financial times.

Not even part ownership by entertainer Wayne Newton in the early 1980s could turn things around.

Japanese billionaire Ginji Yasuda bought the Aladdin and shut it down in September 1986 to remodel the resort at a cost of $30 million. He shocked Las Vegas by keeping all 465 Aladdin employees at the time on the payroll. But that effort also failed to make the Aladdin a premier local property.

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS contributed to this report.