Preservation group leader to visit Vegas

By Joe Schoenmann

Monday, March 17, 2008 | 2 a.m.

A sense of history, a connection to the past, is something you don’t find easily in Las Vegas, most of which looks like it was built two weeks ago.

But people here want it. The recent furor over the potential destruction of the 64-year-old Huntridge Theater and the formation of the Atomic Age Alliance, a group dedicated to preservation, are two examples of the growing need in this metropolis for more than strip malls, cookie-cutter homes and casinos.

Try, however, explaining that undercurrent of need to someone who doesn’t live here. It’s not easy.

Which is part of the reason Heather Macintosh is visiting Las Vegas from Washington, D.C., next week. Since 2004, Macintosh has been president of Preservation Action (preservationaction.org, with the motto “Grassroots Preservation in our Nation’s Capitol”), a 34-year-old group that reminds Congress that maintaining the country’s history is as important as adding new chapters to it.

Macintosh laughingly said she knows little about Las Vegas, which is a big part of the reason she is visiting.

“People have little understanding of Vegas, that there’s anything there beyond the Strip, and that’s part of the reason I’m going there, to learn,” she said.

Macintosh, who in 1998 founded HistoryLink.org, the nation’s first online local history encyclopedia, hopes others want to learn from her.

Part of her mission during her visit will be talking to people about developing relationships with members of Congress and using those relationships to further the agenda of historic preservation.

“I plan on writing this up for my membership,” she said. “If I can find a way to get people to lobby their legislators in Vegas, anybody can do it anywhere. And given an opportunity to see Vegas, I can gain a greater understanding of the issues there.”

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War benefits aren’t what they used to be.

After World War II, my father got a full ride at the University of Wisconsin-Platteville for doing time as a supply truck driver during the Italy campaign. He ended up owning a bar, but he was one smart bartender.

These days coverage is so small that a group has been formed to help veterans of Afghanistan and Iraq pay for college.

Tuesday morning, Rep. Shelley Berkley and representatives of Sen. John Ensign, Sen. Harry Reid and Gov. Jim Gibbons will meet in Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman’s office to honor the Fund for Veterans Education (FVE).

The fund was founded by financier Jerome Kohlberg, an 82-year-old WWII vet who donated $8 million to help “close the tremendous gap between the paltry benefits offered by the current GI Bill and actual college costs,” according to an FVE press release.

The gap is substantial. While the maximum college aid for vets is $39,636 over four years, on average, returning veterans receive just over $6,000 annually, the FVE says. And National Guard and Reserve troops, who constitute a huge percentage of the country’s current combat troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, are eligible for only $440 a month.

The College Board reports that the average four-year state college costs more than $65,000 for in-state students and $105,000 for out-of-state students. A private college costs upwards of $133,000 over four years.

The first 96 scholarship winners include three UNLV students — Cedric Phillips, Safira Allen and Jeremiah Benardis.

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A big piece of Union Park will be further solidified at Wednesday’s City Council meeting.

The city is likely to approve a development agreement allowing Parker City-Core Union Park Hotel LLC to begin development of a $200 million, four-star, 371-room hotel.

Union Park is the 61-acre parcel of land east of Interstate 215 that will eventually be home to a 2,000-seat center for performing arts, the Frank Gehry-designed Lou Ruvo Brain Institute and the sky-scraping World Jewelry Center.