Morgans Hotel Group, the new owner of the Hard Rock Las Vegas, has announced plans to expand the popular hotel-casino. Morgans will add 950 rooms in two towers. In addition, the casino, pool area, concert venue (the Joint), and retail and meeting spaces will expand. Several new food and beverage venues, a nightclub and a spa-health club are also in the works. The expansion, projected to cost $1 billion, will begin later this year, with a scheduled mid-2009 completion date.

STARDUST DOWN: The Stardust tower was imploded Tuesday. The low-rise south entrance of the building remains intact, but the tower is now rubble; it was the tallest tower ever imploded in Las Vegas. Construction will begin on Echelon Place when the 87-acre site is cleared.

LUNCH SPECIAL: The Asian restaurant Koji at the Orleans has a good lunch special for $7.95, served from 11:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. weekdays. A choice of several Chinese dishes comes with soup, spring roll, salad and fried rice. A second daily special called the California Lunchbox is $10 and comes with eight pieces of California roll, plus one each of tuna, salmon and shrimp sushi. This meal also is accompanied by salad and miso soup.

Q. Any tips for March Madness viewing?

The college basketball tournament is the second-biggest sporting event of the year (behind the Super Bowl), and the sports books at all the casinos are similarly jammed. Casinos advertising events include the Las Vegas Hilton and all the Coast Casinos.

For information about Las Vegas shows, buffets, coupons and deals, see www.LasVegasAdvisor.com.