That depends. Often, especially if a property is actually closing, there will be a public sale or auction of the contents, as occurred with the Aladdin, Stardust, Sahara, Riviera, and Clarion in Las Vegas, and at the bankrupt Trump Taj Mahal in Atlantic City, to name just a few.
Back in 2010, when the Tropicana was in the midst of one of its several and ongoing "upgrades," a lot of the fixtures and fittings -- ranging from original items from "the historic Las Vegas Tropicana Hotel & Casino, to general brand-name electronics and general merchandise," according to the official blurb -- were auctioned off at a sale in San Diego.
Similarly, in the fall of 2013, Caesars Entertainment conducted a massive multi-property clearance sale that was physically hosted by the Rio but was also open to online bidders. A total of 14,000 items from Caesars Palace, Planet Hollywood, Bally’s, Paris, Rio, Harrah’s, what was then still The Quad, and Flamingo were sold off and it was an eclectic array to be sure, ranging from the mundane (bedroom furniture, glassware, lampshades, deep fryers, blackjack tables) to the surreal (lashings of faux Roman/Grecian statuary, an eyewash station, a 2007 Mercedes, a purple vinyl sofa, an assortment of tiki huts, some sheet-rock finishing materials, and a giant gold Styrofoam rat, for example).
We recall MGM Mirage holding a similar sale at some point, with cutlery, plates, bedding, and suchlike from Aria, Bellagio, and other properties up for sale. Sometimes, employees are given first dibs, or higher-tier members of the casino's players club, as was the case with this 2010 holiday sale of excess inventory from Wynn/Encore, where some amazing bargains were to be had by the savvy.
If it's a smaller renovation, for example of a single restaurant or nightclub, the old stuff might just be jettisoned in the trash -- we've known of timely dumpster divers coming across velvet chaises longues out back on the Strip in the wee hours, while the current writer purchased a cool gold-and-leopard-print Caesars Palace casino chair a few months back from an enterprising member of the local homeless community.
Sometimes a casino will cannibalize one property to furnish another, as happened in Atlantic City last year when gaming equipment and fixtures from the shuttered Showboat were distributed among Caesars Entertainment's other three Atlantic City properties, with some machines also being sold to third party vendors. Fontainebleau Las Vegas had already in large part been furnished when the project was finally abandoned, leaving downtown's Plaza and Buffalo Bill's in Primm as the only beneficiaries of its demise, to date, with both hotels scoring some brand new upscale furnishings on the cheap courtesy of the F'bleau fire sale.
A final suggestion -- and perhaps we saved the best until last -- is to check out area liquidators, in particular LVLiquidators.com, which specializes in servicing and supplying the hospitality trade. Over the years they've liquidated myriad Las Vegas hotel rooms and other venues (including for Trump Las Vegas, Forum Shops, Palms, Mirage, MGM Grand, Venetian, Bellagio, Boulder Station, and Hard Rock). Their bread-and-butter business consists of large projects, like fully kitting out smaller hotels with recycled bedroom sets from large resorts, or selling a fully equipped kitchen to new a restaurants, but their facility out on Boulder Highway is also open to the general public for limited hours each week (just note that the website isn't updated as often as the inventory, so call to make sure something is still in stock before making a special trip out there).
Currently, among other things, they're selling off all the old furniture from the remodeled Wynn buffet, plus some slot and table game chairs from Paris. In addition, you'll find all kinds of additional weird and wonderful items in their warehouse, from some serious chandeliers, to 2,700 yards of authentic Las Vegas casino carpet. We haven't seen anything about the renovation of the Caesars tower, so there's a good chance that in this instance, the old contents won't hit the public market, but you never know...
