Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

Planners share three strategies for downtown

Urban Planning

Steve Marcus

A view of the Mob Museum and the Lady Luck hotel towers during a tour of downtown buildings in Las Vegas Monday, March 12, 2012.

Updated Friday, Oct. 2, 2015 | 1:23 p.m.

In an effort to create a vision for the 5.5 square miles that make up downtown Las Vegas, consultants hired by the city presented three strategies for the area’s future during community meetings Thursday at the Historic Fifth Street School. Downtown, they said, could be turned into a cultural capital, a lifestyle hub, or a collection of centers of excellence.

Yet establishing a consensus might prove difficult.

At the start of the presentation, Nate Cherry, vice-president of RTKL, a consulting firm, said that arriving at an overall strategy would be a key factor for determining the downtown’s future. “The rest of it is plumbing.”

At a meeting last month, the City Council asked planners to incorporate aspects of three proposal into a single statement. Cherry joked that if a camel was a horse designed by a committee, then his team had been asked to design a camel.

Several members of the audience felt that Thursday’s proposal did not go into enough specifics, leaving out key challenges like housing, transportation and downtown’s connection to broader regional issues.

“Until you address things regionally, I think you are just rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic,” said Danielle Walliser, who served as a city architect from 1982 to 1993.

The three strategies range from a conservative approach that would encourage the city to develop a cultural capital around Symphony Park to an aggressive approach that would encourage the redevelopment of 8 to 10 million square feet into five industrial hubs for things like green technology and medicine. The middle approach would emphasize on development at major intersections.

Howard Weiner, a downtown resident, said it might be difficult to keep to one strategy once other stakeholders, including businesses and elected officials, inevitably become involved. “You’re not going to have a unity of concept,” he said.

Others audience members questioned how the city would fund the project. “It seems really cool,” one audience member said. “But how much money do we have?”

Once RTKL finalizes a strategy, it will present it to the council for review. The council will decide whether it wants to take further action as well as identify funding.

Cherry said that he was optimistic. The challenging part, he said, would be, “convincing people that they actually agree.”

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