The documentary record · 1966–2006
Boardwalk Hotel & Casino
A documented history of one eight-acre Strip property: roadside Holiday Inn, gift-shop casino, publicly traded independent, Mirage land holding, and finally part of CityCenter.
Verified fact and recollection are kept separate. Dates and figures come primarily from Boardwalk Casino, Inc. and Mirage/MGM filings, period newspaper reporting, the property’s archived websites, and UNLV Special Collections. Conflicts and unresolved points remain clearly marked.
- Opened
- 1966
- Final scale
- 654 rooms
- Casino
- 32–33,000 sq ft
- Closed
- Jan. 9, 2006
Confirmed Supported by a primary or contemporaneous record.
Disputed Credible sources conflict; the conflict remains visible.
Unresolved The available record does not support a definitive answer.
Photograph credits appear with each image. The full rights and research ledger is maintained on the credits and sources page.
1966–1985
A Holiday Inn on the South Strip
The Las Vegas Sun announces an innkeeper for a new Holiday Inn at 3740 Las Vegas Boulevard South. The architect is Homer Rissman; his firm’s own December 1968 work-locations map records the commission.
The six-story hotel opens behind the chain’s “great sign.” Room count disputed Period sources support approximately 138–140 rooms at opening; higher totals probably include the 1968 wing. Culinary and Bartenders union members picket the non-union hotel from March into the fall. The hotel has no casino.
A four-story wing opens behind the original tower. The property becomes known as Holiday Inn South, distinguishing it from the unrelated Holiday Inn at 3475 Las Vegas Boulevard South, later the Holiday Casino and then Harrah’s. The two properties are frequently conflated in later archives.
Norbert “Norm” Jansen opens the Holiday Gifts souvenir shop beside the hotel. Jansen had worked as a dealer and casino executive, including at the Pioneer Club, and had participated in development of the other Holiday Casino property. Holiday Gifts becomes the corporate starting point for the later Boardwalk.
An October fire in a fifth-floor room kills the hotel’s innkeeper - believed started by a cigarette. The house survives; the loss stays in the record.
Disputed sequence Boardwalk’s SEC filings say Holiday Gifts began gaming in 1977 with a restricted license for 15 slot machines. Contemporary reporting also records a December 1977 denial of Avis Jansen’s application. A denial followed by later approval is possible, but not yet documented. A nonrestricted license in 1980 expands the Slot Joynt to 35 machines.
1985–1994
From tenant to independent casino
VC, Ltd., with Holiday Gifts, Inc. as general partner, acquires the adjacent hotel, renames it the Viscount Hotel, and physically connects it to the Slot Joynt. The casino’s own records at UNLV preserve June 1988 views of the Viscount tower and the Slot Joynt’s block-long marquee, prices legible. The four Viscount years are no longer missing from the photographic record.
In February the combined property becomes the Boardwalk Hotel & Casino. Jansen also proposes a 21-story hotel tower shaped like a working slot machine, with fifty-foot rotating reels. Clark County approves the concept, but it is abandoned after projected costs rise. Grieve accordingly.
The pre-carnival Boardwalk retains the late-1980s frontage: pink neon arcs, glass block, and a reader board advertising a $1.29 breakfast and a 49¢ shrimp cocktail. Low posted prices are already central to its identity.
Boardwalk Casino, Inc. incorporates in Nevada on July 27, 1993, signs a new Holiday Inn franchise agreement that December, and completes its IPO on February 11, 1994. Shares trade on Nasdaq SmallCap as BWLK at $5.00; warrants trade as BWLKW.
1995–1997
The expansion that defined the Boardwalk
In September the casino floor more than doubles to 33,000 square feet behind a brand-new face: “a ‘Coney Island Amusement Park’ theme… a full-size model roller coaster rising 90 feet above the boardwalk. A rotating ferris wheel, complete with mannequins… a parachute drop with mannequins. The facade features the Company’s logo, Jocko the Clown, whose face stands approximately 45 feet high.” The description comes from the company’s FY1996 SEC filing. The phase also expands the casino from 15,000 to 33,000 square feet. The 105-seat Lighthouse Lounge opens November 28.
The sixteen-story, 451-room Dreamland Tower opens in stages from February through July, bringing the property to approximately 653–654 rooms. Boardwalk markets itself as the largest Holiday Inn in America. Its SEC filings state the operating strategy directly: use an unusually large casino relative to room count to capture pedestrian traffic from the surrounding megaresorts. Occupancy rises from 59.4% to 81.6% between FY1995 and FY1997.
Norm Jansen dies January 6 at age 78. Avis Jansen becomes chairman. The 370-seat Surf Buffet opens in March. Expansion has increased revenue, but the company remains burdened by a $40 million first-mortgage note at 16.5% interest. Its FY1997 filing reports a $3.5 million net loss and substantial doubt about the company’s ability to continue as a going concern.
1997–2004
Acquired as an operating land holding
On September 23, Mirage Resorts purchases the Boardwalk’s $40 million first-mortgage notes without disclosing its identity to Boardwalk management, then acquires neighboring parcels. At a December 11 board meeting, Boardwalk first learns that Mirage is now its lender. An initial $4.25-per-share offer rises to $5.00; the merger agreement is signed December 22.
After regulatory approval, the acquisition closes June 30 for $112 million in cash, according to Mirage’s Q2 filing. Broader figures of $135–144 million reported at the time include adjacent parcels. Mirage classifies Boardwalk as an “incidental operation” whose income reduces the carrying value of the assembled land. Wynn’s deputy promises to remove the mannequins from the Ferris wheel; a 2002 survey finds them still riding. The mannequins outlast Steve Wynn.
MGM Grand acquires Mirage Resorts on May 31, 2000. Boardwalk continues as the smallest and least expensive property in the combined portfolio while plans for the site are deferred. Date disputed The Holiday Inn flag appears to have been removed in 2002; one retrospective source gives 2003. By July 2002 the property’s own website no longer uses the Holiday Inn name.
By July 2002 the casino is using lvboardwalk.com, one of several official domains captured by the Wayback Machine through 2005. Its archived pages document room offers, restaurant prices, gaming rules, entertainment, and the property’s own floor-plan terminology. This memorial now occupies that former official web address.
On November 10, MGM MIRAGE announces Project CityCenter, a multi-billion-dollar mixed-use development across 66 acres including the Boardwalk site. MGM’s FY2004 filing states that Boardwalk will close within the next two years.
2005–2006
Closure and demolition
On October 19, MGM sets the closing date: January 9, 2006. Roughly 700 employees receive notice and transfer information. The announced demolition plan at that point calls for conventional, piece-by-piece removal rather than implosion. In November, Avis Jansen is still operating the gift shop and planning to take Norm Jansen’s gold-framed lobby portrait home.
Purple Reign gives its final Boardwalk performance on Saturday night. The long-running Prince tribute moves next to the House of Blues at Mandalay Bay.
The last hotel guests leave by 11 a.m.; the casino closes shortly before noon as security and gaming agents lock down the machines. Dealer Charlie Velasco makes the final count. MGM reports 694 employees at closing, with more than 300 already hired by sister properties. A columnist’s farewell lands the only obituary this place would have wanted: proof “even a terribly tacky joint… can grind out a cash flow” - “it’s the end of an error.”
A public auction of property remnants is scheduled at the Boardwalk. Collector and former lieutenant governor Lonnie Hammargren subsequently announces his purchase of the Ferris wheel, Surf Buffet sign, wedding gazebo, and 15-foot lighthouse, the latter signed by employees. Fate unresolved The present location of those four pieces has not been verified.
In the early-morning hours, Controlled Demolition, Inc. implodes the stripped sixteen-story tower. Contemporary reporting indicates that the clown facade remains standing that morning and is demolished with the remaining frontage during the following weeks. Boardwalk demolition material is recycled into CityCenter construction, including foundation material.
2009–today
The site and the surviving record
The Mandarin Oriental, Las Vegas opened within CityCenter on December 4, 2009 and was renamed Waldorf Astoria Las Vegas in 2018. The safe geographic claim is that the Waldorf occupies the former Boardwalk site at CityCenter’s Strip frontage; no located source maps the old parcel corners precisely. Surviving Boardwalk material includes privately held chips and tokens, the uncertain Hammargren purchases, and approximately 22 cubic feet of corporate records, photographs, promotional material and audiovisual records in UNLV Special Collections collection MS-00093.
Corrections and limitations
Where the public record goes wrong
- Las Vegas had two Holiday Inns. This property stood at 3740–3750 Las Vegas Boulevard South and became the Viscount and Boardwalk. The property at 3475 became the Holiday Casino and later Harrah’s. Address evidence is required for every early photograph.
- The Library of Congress dates its Boardwalk photos “1980s/1990s.” Impossible: the carnival facade is documented to 1995 by SEC filings. The photographs date from c. 1995–2002.
- Jocko did not date from 1988. The SEC record dates the carnival facade to 1995. Photographs also establish two distinct clown elements: the approximately 45-foot Jocko face and a full-body jack-in-the-box figure at the north entrance.
- The Homer Rissman attribution is supported. Rissman & Rissman’s own December 1968 work-locations map places a Holiday Inn commission at this site before the unrelated 3475 project existed. The final year digit on the available scan remains difficult to read.
- No public roller-coaster ride operated. SEC filings describe a full-size model. One architectural-designer portfolio later claimed the structure was engineered as an operable magnetic-propulsion coaster that the owner chose not to open. That single-source claim remains uncorroborated.
Corrections and documentary leads are welcome through the guestbook. A correction should identify the claim and, where possible, the underlying record.
The record remains open
Photographs, documents and corrections still matter.
The largest remaining archive is Boardwalk Hotel and Casino Records, 1993–2005 (MS-00093), held by UNLV Special Collections. Family photographs and employee material can still resolve gaps that corporate filings cannot.