The oldest property in Las Vegas is getting a new lease on life. A multimillion-dollar expansion at the 106-year-old Golden Gate hotel-casino aims to fuse the past and present.
The expansion, its first in 50 years, features a new five-story luxury tower with 16 hotel suites, including two fifth-floor penthouses, an extended casino floor, a new high-limit gaming pit with dancing dealers, a new lobby with artifacts from the hotel’s past and a porte cochere. Renovations are scheduled for completion by July.
In an interview with Travel Weekly, Mark Branderburg, co-CEO of the Golden Gate, said investors purchased the property in 2008 with an eye toward meshing history and modernity. Prior to the expansion, the hotel’s 106 existing rooms were updated with pillow-top mattresses, Keurig coffeemakers, flat-screen TVs, iPod docking stations and more.
“We’re not a megaresort. We’re small and walkable, but we still have a high-energy atmosphere,” Brandenburg said. “We also have history. Visitors from around the country and around the world know who we are. We started the tradition of shrimp cocktail. (Founding partner Italo Ghelfi introduced it to the casino scene in 1959). We’re the oldest hotel in Vegas, founded in 1906. We love being a historic property with dancing dealers but one that also has contemporary, cutting-edge excitement.”
Citing the recent openings of the Mob Museum and the Smith Center for Performing Arts along with expanded dining, drinking and entertainment options in the burgeoning Fremont East Entertainment District, Brandenburg said now is the perfect time to expand. Golden Gate is a short walk from the Fremont Street Experience, which annually draws 25 million visitors.
“When it opened back in 1906 at 1 Fremont Street, Golden Gate signaled the birth of downtown Las Vegas,” Golden Gate co-owner and CEO Derek Stevens said. “Now, more than a century later, we’re proud to be a vibrant part of its dramatic renaissance.”
Golden Gate dates back to the birth of Las Vegas, when the land it still sits on was purchased for $1,750 in the city's landmark May 15, 1905, land auction. In 1907, it became home to the city’s first telephone. The property welcomed one of the city’s first neon signs in 1927, and in the 1950s, Golden Gate partners pioneered the use of two-way mirrors above the gaming pit; though visible, the surveillance mirrors are no longer in use.