Caesars Palace to demolish rotunda along Strip

The Clark County Building Department issued a demolition permit last week for the domed, Roman-themed structure along Las Vegas Boulevard, records show. The permit is valued at $157,500.

Workers are slated to remove landscaping, obelisks and other features at the rotunda, filings with the county indicate.

Building plans also state, without providing additional details: “Demolition in preparation for F1 event.”

Located next to a driveway to the sprawling hotel-casino, the rotunda was still standing Tuesday afternoon.

Casino chain Caesars Entertainment Inc., operator of Caesars Palace, did not respond to a request for comment.

The rotunda has been closed to the public for years and appears to be more of an oft-photographed curiosity in Las Vegas’ famed casino corridor.

Heidi Sarno Straus, daughter of Caesars Palace developer Jay Sarno, who opened the resort in the 1960s, told the Review-Journal on Tuesday that the rotunda was “not in the original plan” and was “really meaningless.”

“It might have been used for storage. It was really just aesthetics,” she said. “It’s no loss.”

Las Vegas’ Formula One race weekend, meanwhile, is scheduled for Nov. 16-18, and is poised to draw huge crowds and a windfall of spending.

The 3.8-mile route will include a stretch of the Strip, and drivers are expected to reach speeds of more than 200 mph.

Caesars Entertainment already unveiled a $5 million “Emperor Package” for the race that includes five nights in a villa at Caesars Palace with views of the track.

All told, the race is expected to produce almost $1.3 billion in total economic impact, according to a January announcement from Las Vegas Grand Prix CEO Renee Wilm.

Contact Eli Segall at esegall@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0342. Follow @eli_segall on Twitter. Review-Journal columnist John Katsilometes contributed to this report.

This story has been updated to correct the spelling of Heidi Sarno Straus’s surname.