New route for monorail would sidetrack lawsuit

Developers of a monorail in the Las Vegas resort corridor have come up with a new route that would include stops at two additional resorts and a shopping mall.

The proposed new route would also dodge a confrontation with residents of Desert Inn Estates, who last month sued the Clark County Commission over an earlier planned route.

MGM Grand-Bally's Monorail LLC is developing the 4-mile, $350 million project. The County Commission approved a franchise agreement with MGM Grand-Bally's in early December, precipitating the lawsuit.

Attorney Laura FitzSimmons, who represents the homeowners, said she would move to dismiss the suit if the new route is approved. The 55 owners have said their homes would be devalued if a monorail were to run along Sands Avenue and Paradise Road near the edge of their property lines.

The monorail route would link Bally's hotel-casino with the Sahara and would be an extension of an existing monorail now operating between Bally's and the MGM Grand.

The present alignment of the project runs north from Bally's along the rear of the Flamingo Hilton, Imperial Palace and Harrah's properties, then goes east to Koval Lane and north to Sands Avenue.

Under the original plan, the route would veer east along Sands and north on Paradise, skirting the Desert Inn homes. It has stops at the Las Vegas Convention Center, the Las Vegas Hilton and the Sahara.

Under the new plan, the route would travel northwest along Sands Avenue in front of the Sands Expo Center and cross the Strip onto Spring Mountain Road.

It would then turn north into the Fashion Show mall and the New Frontier hotel-casino, go across the Desert Inn arterial to the Stardust hotel-casino, then go east along Convention Center Drive to the Convention Center and the original route.

Officials with the monorail company said they are meeting this week with representatives of the mall, the two resorts and the parent companies of two other properties that would be impacted by the route change to answer questions and gather support.

In addition to meeting with representatives of the mall, the New Frontier and the Stardust, monorail developers also plan to discuss the new alignment with officials of Las Vegas Sands Inc., developers of the Venetian hotel-casino project, and Mirage Resorts Inc., which operates Treasure Island.

The proposed new route nearly encircles the Venetian and the Sands Expo Center while skirting Treasure Island on its northeast corner.

The new alignment is expected to be formally presented to county commissioners at a meeting Wednesday.

"When we got our route approved (by the County Commission) on Dec. 2, they told us to look at an alternative route," Bob Broadbent, who is coordinating the project for MGM Grand-Bally's, said. "So that's what we're doing. We were directed to file a report within 60 days, so we're now on the agenda for Feb. 3 with an alternative."

Broadbent said the revised route would be slightly longer -- and more expensive to build -- but is worthwhile in the long run. Not only is there potential to enlist the Fashion Show, New Frontier and Stardust properties to invest in the monorail, but there potentially would be more riders because it would serve a larger area.

Mirage and Venetian officials said they would reserve specific comments on the plan until they heard Broadbent's presentation.

"We haven't seen the proposal yet," David Friedman, assistant to Las Vegas Sands Chairman Sheldon Adelson, said.

"We have far too much respect for Bob Broadbent to not consider this," Alan Feldman, a spokesman for Mirage Resorts, added.

Both Friedman and Feldman share concerns about basic monorail operational issues. Feldman said Mirage is is wary of any private transportation system that puts the public on the hook for picking up costs. He said Mirage also is concerned about eminent-domain issues.

Friedman said monorail discussions got off on the wrong foot with Sands officials from the beginning when initial route maps showed the track operating through the center of the property.

He added that there hasn't been enough study of a Strip monorail to determine what the impact would be on the highly successful Citizens Area Transit bus line along Las Vegas Boulevard.

"What we discovered during the course of our own investigation was shocking to us," Friedman said. "At the end of the day, what it appeared to us was that the county (through the Regional Transportation Commission) was putting a perfectly good bus system in jeopardy."

When asked what a monorail line would do to the look of the front of Treasure Island, Feldman said that it was far too early to discuss aesthetics and that other issues should take precedence.

The route would be an extension of the free elevated system operated between the MGM Grand and Bally's. The initial extension would add six new stations between the MGM Grand and the Sahara. Stations would be built at the New Aladdin at Harmon Avenue, the Flamingo Hilton, a joint stop for the Imperial Palace and Harrah's, the Las Vegas Convention Center, the Las Vegas Hilton and the Sahara.

In addition, the Bally's stop would be revamped to serve both Bally's and the new Paris hotel-casino.

Broadbent said the monorail would be financed by the properties building stops and $63 million in debt. The annual operating costs of $8.5 million to $9 million a year would be paid for by users of the system, who would be charged fares ranging from $2 to $3.

Broadbent said about 5 million people a year use the MGM Grand-Bally's monorail, which takes riders less than a mile and isn't widely promoted.

The monorail proposal is not without some major engineering challenges. Between the Bally's-Paris station and the Flamingo Hilton stop, the monorail track would pass through the Bally's hotel structure about 45 feet above the ground. At the Las Vegas Convention Center, the track would climb 75 feet above the ground to pass over a new pedestrian bridge over Paradise Road.

Planners also are trying to determine the monorail's potential impact on buildings still on the drawing board. On the north end of the route, the Sahara station would be built adjacent to an existing pedestrian overpass at Paradise Road at the Sahara hotel-casino. The monorail would be adjacent to a proposed convention center at the Sahara that has been put on hold until the monorail alignment is set.

Other proposed projects along the route include a 39-story, 2,500-room hotel-casino at Sands Avenue and Koval Lane called the Olympic Sunrise hotel-casino; a luxury condominium project at Paradise and Riviera Boulevard, west of the Las Vegas Hilton; another condominium project at the northeast corner of Paradise and Karen Avenue; and the Marriott Marquee, an upscale hotel planned at the MGM Grand. The Sahara also plans a 46-story tower on its property near the monorail corridor.

But the most controversial part of the route was the right-of-way adjacent to Desert Inn Estates, a residential neighborhood around the Desert Inn golf course. The homeowners said the monorail would devalue their homes by $300,000 to $400,000 and would ruin their privacy.

Broadbent said that while the guideways to be built would be similar to the tracks in place between Bally's and the MGM Grand, the trains would sport new technology and would be an upgrade from existing equipment. The new trains would operate as an automated system with a control center and not with engineers aboard the train.

The properties pitching in on the construction costs would get monorail stations about 240 feet long, about 60 to 80 feet wide and about 40 to 60 feet above the ground. Planners say they want sites that can be extended to 300 feet to accommodate longer trains in the future.

The system, to be manufactured by Bombardier, a Canadian company that built the original Disneyland monorail, would include six trains with four to six cars each.

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