A schedule has been announced for the razing of downtown’s Las Vegas Club, Mermaids, and Girls of Glitter Gulch in preparation for the building of a new resort in that space.

Rather than an implosion, there will be a systematic demolition of the buildings that will begin July 15, though work has already begun with the removal of the Vegas Vickie sign that was perched above Glitter Gulch. While details of the end product haven’t been disclosed, it will be a completely new resort built from the ground up.

One more day: Due to requirements that casinos operate within a two-year period to preserve their slot licenses, the above-mentioned Las Vegas Club and Mermaids will open for eight hours of live machine play this week. Las Vegas Club will open on Tuesday and Mermaids on Wednesday. The exact hours haven’t been specified, and it’s likely that only a small area in each casino will be accessible.

117: Las Vegas tied an all-time record with the temperature officially hitting 117 degrees around 4 p.m. Tuesday. It’s happened three times before, on July 24, 1942; July 19, 2005; and June 30, 2013, making this the earliest date of the four 117s. Temps have since eased back to the 110 range.

Big bang: You don’t have to be on the Strip to hit a giant jackpot. A player at the El Cortez hit for $1.1 million last week on a Big Bang Theory machine.

Question: Last week you wrote that the company buying the Stratosphere is “Nevada’s biggest slot-route operator.” What is a slot-route operator?

Answer: While casinos have staffs and bankrolls large enough to meet gaming-regulation requirements for offering gambling machines, most bars, convenience stores and other smaller establishments do not.

These places rely on outside companies to conduct maintenance, pay out jackpots and collect and distribute proceeds from their machines. In Nevada there are about a dozen such companies, called slot-route operators.

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