Thursday, Sept. 20, 2001 | 10:58 a.m.
Blackjack and roulette tables sit empty and banks of slot machines remain eerily mute in the multimillion-dollar resorts along Las Vegas Boulevard.
A makeshift shrine spreads across the front of New York-New York hotel-casino. Its 150-foot Statue of Liberty replica is crowded with candles, flowers and cards remembering the victims of terrorist attacks in New York and Washington.
"We're cutting our trip short by three days," said Los Angeles resident Norma Isiordia. "It doesn't feel like the time to have fun right now, not after what happened."
At New York-New York, reminders of the tragedy are everywhere. The resort is built to include some of the most memorable parts of the New York skyline. It includes a 47-story replica of the Empire State Building, but not the World Trade Center; the skyline is supposed to represent the Big Apple of the 1940s.
Inside, employees outnumber patrons in restaurants and high-roller lounges. The keno lounge is virtually deserted. Some of the big screen televisions in the sports book remain tuned to news channels.
After the terrorist attacks, the hotel's shows were canceled, security was increased and piles of T-shirts, hats and coffee mugs bearing emblems of the New York fire and police departments filled kiosks and shops.
By one count, only six of 75 table games were open Tuesday. Across the street at the MGM Grand hotel-casino, crowds were equally sparse. Dealers stood patiently behind empty tables of green felt.
The scene is repeated along the Las Vegas Strip, where marquees bear images of waving American flags and the message "God Bless America." Tourists and their gambling dollars are staying home, whether out of fear, grief or the snarling of the nation's air travel system.
Around Las Vegas, some 54,000 conventioneers have canceled or postponed events this week alone, a $65 million hit in nongaming revenues, the Las Vegas Visitors and Convention Authority said.
So far, 243 conventions and meetings planned for September, October and November have canceled. Last year the city drew 11 percent of its estimated 36 million visitors from conventions.
With a little more than half of the 75,000 rooms on the Las Vegas Strip empty over the weekend, hotels were forced to slash room rates this week. Normally, weekend visitors fill about 94 percent of the city's 126,083 hotel rooms.
Wilma Haley, a slot floor person who has worked at the Stardust hotel-casino for 30 years, shook her head. She couldn't recall a time when casinos were so empty. "The impact has been felt by the whole city," she said.
The self-proclaimed "marriage capital of the world" that averages more than 300 weddings a day saw license applications immediately drop about 40 percent last week.
"We're all shook up," said Cathy Carlson, a wedding planner who lost half her 10 daily bookings last week at the Elvis-themed Graceland Wedding Chapel on the Las Vegas Strip. "First it was people who couldn't get here. Now it's people who are afraid to fly. We've had a lot of cancellations."
Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., said: "You have to realize what an impact air transportation has. About 660 million Americans flew last year and 34 million came to Las Vegas."
Nearly half of the city's visitors come via airlines, which are anticipating a 20 percent drop in overall business, said Keith Schwer, director of UNLV's Center for Business and Economic Research.
That led McCarran International Airport's second largest carrier -- America West -- and Las Vegas-based National Airlines to reduce their work forces by about 20 percent.
Combine airline reductions with an estimated 10 percent drop in drive-in traffic, and Schwer said the city could face up to a 20 percent visitor drop over the next two months.
"The trouble with having a one-industry town is that if that industry is in trouble, everything is in trouble," he said.
Shoji Suzuki, 58, parked his cab and waited for a fare. He usually averages three rides an hour. This week he is down to just one, cutting his daily take two-thirds to $100.
"This has been horrible. This is the worst I have ever seen," said Suzuki, who has driven a cab in Las Vegas for six years. "People are saying, 'How are we going to pay our bills?' Everyone is going to be hurting."
Hotel vacancies -- currently an estimated 33 percent citywide -- mean layoffs for resorts and postponement of at least one big gaming project.
Park Place Entertainment Corp. put on hold plans to build a $475 million, 900-room tower at Caesars Palace hotel-casino.
Stockholders weighed in this week and gaming stocks took a beating. "If we have a decline for more than a month, we'll be hurting for a year," said UNLV professor Bill Thompson, who studies the gambling industry.
Rossi Ralenkotter, visitors authority vice president of marketing said, for now, Las Vegas will market itself in regions within a few hours' drive including Southern California -- which supplies Las Vegas with 26 percent of its visitors.
"Las Vegas provides the perfect escape whenever people feel uncertainty," he said.
Reid doubts there will be any long-term effects.
"It's like saying, 'Will people continue to come to Paris?"' Reid said. "People are going to continue to come to Paris. They are going to continue to come to Las Vegas. Las Vegas is the destination resort of the world, not just the U.S."
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