Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

OPINION:

More buzz about our new NHL team, and the end of a downtown era

Las Vegas Downtown Businesses

Steve Marcus

The Emergency Arts Building in downtown Las Vegas Sunday, Nov. 1, 2015.

Principal owner Bill Foley is busy assembling his front-office staff for Las Vegas’ NHL team, which could be called the Black Knights. One focus of speculation around the scene happens to be a former professional hockey executive: Billy Johnson.

The president and CEO of the Las Vegas Wranglers from 2003 to 2014, Johnson has the rare mix of experience with pro-sports operations and knowledge of the Las Vegas entertainment market. But as of last week, he had not been contacted about a position by Foley or anyone representing the Las Vegas team.

Johnson did meet with Foley informally in October — long before the NHL announced its expansion plans for Las Vegas — but the line has since gone cold. As an executive helping to run Wayne Newton’s Casa de Shenandoah, Johnson says he is fine at “the Ranch” and is leaving his future to fate.

“I’m happy doing what I’m doing now. If they think I can help them, they’ll invite me to the table,” he said. “I do not think I am entitled to any consideration whatsoever.”

Johnson’s strength in his prior position was in inventive promotions tied to Wranglers games at Orleans Arena: a visit from Tony Clifton, the smarmy alter ego of the late Andy Kaufman; Dick Cheney Hunting Vest Night, connected to the ’06 incident in which the then-VP shot a hunting partner; and personal favorite Over 18 Night, involving performers from adult revues.

In that latter promotional free-for-all, held in 2009, Johnson had been inspired by a conversation with the Wranglers’ majority owner at the time, Charles Davenport. The two were deep in convo, and likely deep in the ale, at McMullan’s Irish Pub. Davenport came up with the idea, and Johnson made notes on a cocktail napkin. It was reminiscent of many inspired ideas jotted on napkins, including the time San Francisco Giants General Manager Spec Richardson scrawled out the terms of the trade that sent Vida Blue from the Oakland A’s across the Bay. Maybe we’ve graduated from that form of developmental strategy, but if they need someone to sketch out a plan of attack for the Black Knights, he’s at Wayne’s place.

• The closing of the Beat Coffeehouse at the Emergency Arts fortress on Sixth and Fremont streets will mark the end of an era on Fremont East. Set to close on Sept. 30, the Beat was a forerunner of the redevelopment sparked largely by the Downtown Project in that neighborhood. The vision for Emergency Arts and its assemblage of galleries and workspaces was that of Michael and Jennifer Cornthwaite, who founded Downtown Cocktail Room three years before focusing on the old Fremont Medical Building.

The Cornthwaites worked with landowners to create a locally driven, downtown destination for artists and those who wanted to hang out, sip coffee and noodle around on laptops. In its place will be the chain restaurant Eureka, offering 40 local craft beers on tap and live music (which hopefully will be local, too). The company is based in Hawthorne, Calif., and boasts 23 locations in Southern California and the Bay Area, Texas and Seattle.

With the Beat as its anchor, Emergency Arts opened in the spring of 2010. In January of that year, during renovations of the building, Michael Cornthwaite said, “We’re giving this a year to make it work.” If it didn’t, he and his wife were mulling a move to Seattle or San Francisco. But the Cornthwaites are still in town, and the Beat held together for six years before the landlords decided to swap in an established chain. Consequently, Emergency Arts will take up the top two floors of the three-story complex.

Eureka is to open in mid-2017, and we’ll see how a chain restaurant is received and behaves in a spot envisioned as a genuine, locally operated small business. Maybe, for nostalgia’s sake, the new proprietors will keep the Beat’s old WiFi password (hit the Beat once more to know what it is).

• Also being moved out of Emergency Arts is the Burlesque Hall of Fame. It’s a natural location for such a collection, except that not much of the collection is on display in the small room just off the Emergency Arts entrance. The space is about 200 square feet, and the hall of fame’s new space in the Arts District (at 1025 S. Main St.) is upwards of 3,000 square feet.

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