One of the great names in Las Vegas Casino lore is going to be gone this year. The Stardust Hotel and Casino will be leaving to create the mega-complex  called the Echelon.

The Stardust Hotel and Casino, in business since 1958, will close later this year and be torn down in 2007 to make way for a $4 billion development to be called Echelon Place, it was announced last week. The 60-plus acre project from parent company Boyd Gaming will contain a grand total of 5,300 hotel rooms operating under four different banners.
The first, and by far the biggest, is the Boyd-owned and operated Echelon Resort, a $2.9 billion hotel and casino that will feature 3,300 rooms — 2,600 “standard” units in one tower and 700 suites in a second.
Next will be a Las Vegas version of the chic Los Angeles hotel the Mondrian that will feature 1,000 rooms and a separate check-in, pool, restaurants, bars and more.
The same group that is creating the Mondrian will also create a 600-room Delano hotel, patterned after the South Beach resort of the same name.
Finally, one of the leading hotel groups in Asia will build a 400 room Shangri-La hotel, complete with a 20,000-square-foot casino.
At the center of all of this accommodation madness is a massive casino and entertainment facility. It will feature 140,000 square feet of casino space (that’s second only to MGM Grand on the Strip), a 350,000-square-foot shopping facility (roughly the same size as Venetian’s Grand Canal Shoppes), a 4,000-seat theater for major productions and concerts, a 1,500-seat theater for smaller events, 1 million square feet of convention space, a giant pool and recreation area and another spa. via KTVU.com