Kirk Kerkorian was born in 1917 in California’s San Joaquin Valley, the fourth of four children born to an Armenian farmer who went broke and moved his family to Los Angeles when Kirk was five years old. The boy grew up by his wits, selling newspapers, caddying, amateur boxing, dealing in used cars, and earning his private-pilot’s wings. During the war, he worked for the British Royal Air Force, ferrying airplanes from their North American manufacturers to England.
In 1947, he bought the Los Angeles Air Service, a charter service that flew frequently between L.A. and Las Vegas, and his love affair with Sin City began.
Twenty years later, he bought 82 acres on Paradise Road, just north of the Convention Center, to build the largest hotel in town, the International. That same year, he also bought the Flamingo for $13 million, which he used as a "hotel school" to train the core staff for the 1,500-room International. The sale to Kirk Kerkorian of the Flamingo eliminated the 20-year behind-the-scenes involvement of the eastern underworld in Bugsy’s old joint.
When it opened in July 1969, the International was several hundred rooms larger than the Stardust, which had been the biggest in Las Vegas for 12 years. It was designed as a single high-rise, as opposed to the tacked-on towers and leapfrogging cubes of rooms of many of the Strip properties. All $60 million of construction costs were borne by Kerkorian’s cash and personal line of credit. For the grand opening, Barbra Streisand appeared in the 2,000-seat theater. The casino was 30,000 square feet, also Las Vegas’s largest, and it boasted a Benihana of Tokyo hibachi restaurant. Elvis Presley made his great Las Vegas comeback at the International during opening month (and performed there exclusively until his death in 1977).
Meanwhile, Kerkorian was on to bigger and better deals, such as buying Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios. While distracted by Hollywood, however, Kerkorian’s emerging Las Vegas empire was caught short by unforeseen events. The recession of the early 1970s (including the gasoline crisis) had a negative impact on Las Vegas visitation and revenues. In addition, when Kerkorian, for reasons that were never fully explained, was "unable" to produce old financial records from the Flamingo that the feds needed to bolster their case against past owners of the former mob joint, the Securities and Exchange Commission disallowed a public stock offering in the International, which would have paid off the hotel’s debt in full.
His master plan foiled, in 1970, Kerkorian was forced to sell part of the International to Hilton for $21.4 million. One year later, Hilton purchased the rest of the property, plus the Flamingo, for $31 million.
Hilton changed the International’s name to the Las Vegas Hilton in 1971. By 1978, the 1,500-room east and north wings had been completed, giving the hotel more than 3,000 rooms and making it one of the largest hotels in the world. It remained the largest in Las Vegas for 16 years until the Flamingo, since renamed the Flamingo Hilton, surpassed it with 3,500 rooms in 1990.
In 1998, Hilton split in two: Hilton Gaming and Hilton Hotels. Shortly thereafter, Hilton Gaming merged with Bally Entertainment in a new company, Park Place Entertainment (see "QoD" 7/11/14 for more on that story). In 2000, Park Place changed its name to Caesars Entertainment. In 2004, Caesars Entertainment sold the Las Vegas Hilton to L.A.-based Colony Capital for $280 million.
On January 1, 2012, Hilton Worldwide terminated its franchise agreement with the Las Vegas Hilton and the property was renamed LVH (Las Vegas Hotel and Casino). The hotel was foreclosed ten months later and taken over by its main creditor, Goldman Sachs, in a partnership with Gramercy Capital. Finally, LVH was sold to Westgate Resorts for a reported $170 million and the hotel was renamed Westgate Las Vegas on July 1, 2014.
