Cars wait in traffic near Formula One Las Vegas Grand Prix grandstands on South Koval Lane Monday, Oct. 30, 2023.
Wednesday, Nov. 8, 2023 | 2 a.m.
Our family car turned right onto Koval Lane from Harmon Avenue and started driving north.
A run for the pizza special at Ellis Island turned into a surprise: We were driving through the heart of the nearly complete Las Vegas Grand Prix track. It’s a shame the Subaru couldn’t go any faster.
Bleachers for the upcoming Formula One weekend and other race infrastructure are mostly in place, officials said Tuesday. You can easily visualize the packed stands, bright lights illuminating the course and open-wheel single-seater cars humming through the Resort Corridor at speeds over 220 mph.
The start and finish lines for the Nov. 16-18 event are on Koval at the Formula One paddock headquarters.
Christina Ellis, vice president of development at Ellis Island, drives that stretch of Koval daily on the way to work at the locals casino. Ellis has seen the vision for the race come into focus over the months and makes a great comparison: It’s comparable to standing at the 50-yard line at Allegiant Stadium in the final stages of construction of theNFL stadium that opened in 2020.
“I feel like I am going down the race track when I am going to work in the morning,” she said. “It’s slowly coming together. You can see how Koval has been transformed.”
Make no doubt about it, the transformation is eye-catching. But, unfortunately, it has come with so many headaches and inconveniences for locals that many wish the race wasn’t setting up shop here for the next 10 years.
We are tired of sitting in traffic on our commute to the Strip for work or to socialize because of constant work on the roads the racecourse will occupy. Some of us have reported being stuck in the parking garage because of the congestion.
The bus route many hospitality workers take to Las Vegas Boulevard has been altered or canceled because of race-related construction, forcing the workers — the backbone of our tourism workforce — to alter their commute or walk. Some days, it’s unexpected delays in adding hours to the commute home after a long day on the job at one of the Strip resorts.
Getting the course ready has also included tearing down those beautiful and well-developed trees in front of the Bellagio Fountains for premium race-viewing seats. We didn’t realize how much we loved those trees until they were gutted.
Tourism officials have said they suspected there would be some hiccups in preparing the Strip and surrounding side streets for the 3.8-mile course. But they admit they didn’t expect the disruptions to be this severe.
We also didn’t expect Formula One to be so unaccommodating.
Formula One in July threatened to block the views of Strip venues overlooking the Las Vegas Grand Prix course unless those venues paid a licensing fee. When word started to spread of the demands, the race league didn’t step in to deny the ridiculous claims or to clarify.
By not speaking, they earned distrust in our community — one that has a decades long history of rolling out the red carpet to organizers coming to town to host an event. Remember, nobody does it better than Vegas when throwing a party.
Race officials in the spring also requested $40 million in public money from Clark County to help cover costs of infrastructure work, which a race representative told the commission could be up to $80 million. They never got public money.
And last weekend, three-time world champion Max Verstappen surely sounded like someone who didn’t want tocompete here when he said, “First of all, I think we are there more for the show than the racing itself if you look at the layout of the track,” according to Motorsport.com. “But you know, I’m actually not that into it. I’m more like, I’ll go there and do my thing and be gone again.”
Yes, it’s safe to say the marriage between Southern Nevada and the race hasn’t gotten off to a great start. But it’s an important marriage that will require work and patience for both Las Vegas and Formula One. They need each other for the race to succeed.
The Las Vegas Grand Prix will be the first race the league has contested on a Saturday in more than 40 years. Formula One is looking to make a splash in the U.S. market with cars being showcased under the bright lights of the Strip.
Liberty Media, the parent company of Formula One, is investing $500 million to set up shop here, including the 300,000-square-foot paddock facility on Koval that will serve as the group’s full-time headquarters in Las Vegas.
Liberty Media CEO Greg Maffei told investors in the spring that “once we have the event in Vegas there’s going to be a whole new recognition for Formula One in the United States, which still is our most important sponsorship market.”
The 50-lap race is expected to bring 170,000 people to Las Vegas and with them an economic impact of $1.5 billion, officials have said. While those estimates could be inflated — some hotel and airfare rates, and race ticket prices have decreased as the event gets nearer — there’s still significant money flowing into town.
Steve Hill, CEO of the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority, said last month that taxes collected from the three-day race weekend were estimated to be $87.5 million — $25 million of which will go toward K-12 education. He said that “whether they realize it or not, everyone in the state will reap the benefits.”
Those benefits are more obvious for venues on the race course, including small properties like Ellis Island. It is a race venue partner, bringing in 1,000 stadium seats to create grandstand viewing in an area dubbed, “Turn 4” because the property is situated near Turn 4 of the course. Three-day passes for the grandstand, including food and nonalcoholic drinks, are $1,500.
Echoing what tourism leaders are saying, Ellis said that getting everything up and running has been an invaluable experience for future years. The excitement is unmatched, she stresses.
“We are lucky to have a property right on the sightline,” she said. “You can see the infrastructure being put up and everything coming together. You really get the full scope of what’s happening. It’s so exciting.”
