The Las Vegas Neon Museum has plans to relocate in 2026, but the move will be no mean feat.
Museum operators are set to ask the Centennial Commission for a roughly $2.1 million grant to cover the costs of relocating its historic lobby, saved from the La Concha Motel, built in the old days of the Las Vegas Strip.
The building, dating from 1961, will be entirely packed up and shipped 1.7 miles across town during the move.
The Neon Museum’s planned new home will be just north of the Las Vegas Strip in the Arts District. It is currently located just north of Downtown at 770 Las Vegas Boulevard North. The move is set to cost some $7 million in total
The Move
The Neon Museum says it received 200,000 visitors in 2023. But it still had to turn away a total of some 30,000 people across days it was fully booked.
Directors say the new space will allow the popular attraction to not only have more visitors, but display more pieces, too. With the signage displays almost all outside, maintenance and visitor welfare costs have been high in Las Vegas’ recent record heat.
The new Arts District space will offer a larger space overall, with both indoor and outdoor display possibilities.
“One of the biggest complaints we receive is that people can’t see the things we’re protecting,” said Museum Director Aaron Berger, speaking to The Art Newspaper last month.
“We will always continue to accept pieces to make sure that we’re preserving history, so the storage component is necessary. These pieces obviously can’t be educated from a closet.”
The Las Vegas Centennial Commission is a city public body in charge of distributing funds raised through, among other things, sales of commemorative Las Vegas license plates. If it does grant the $2 million to the Neon Museum, it will be the biggest grant from the agency. An extra $2 million has already been promised by the city, and $2 million further has come from the Museum’s existing funds and private donors.
The Museum’s move is a part of Las Vegas’ drive to bring more attention to its Arts District. Founded in 1997, the area is growing steadily, but is still under-visited by tourists, despite being just off the Las Vegas Strip.
The Museum
Aside from the striking 1961 main lobby, the Neon Museum’s expansive collection will also need moving.
That includes signage and other pieces from venerable Las Vegas casinos past, like the 1950s casinos the Stardust, The Hacienda, and the Desert Inn. It also has pieces from the New Frontier, the second casino to open in Las Vegas.
It recently added signage and other items from two venerable Las Vegas Strip casino resorts that closed this year. The Tropicana closed back in March, and then in July, the Mirage followed.
Both iconic casino resorts saw large signage pieces donated to the Neon Museum after they shut down. In the case of the Mirage, one of its signs was so large that Las Vegas Boulevard was temporarily shut down for half an hour (across both lanes) while crews moved it to its new home.
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