Monday, Jan. 26, 2004 | 11:04 a.m.
Call it the price of progress.
Furniture store owner Larry Watson showed up at Las Vegas City Council last week to register his concerns with a proposal to close a street that fronts one side of his Las Vegas Arts District area furniture store.
After the meeting, he talked about his general support for the Arts District and downtown redevelopment, and his worry that the process of re-creating the neighborhood will leave him in the lurch.
"It's good for the downtown area, if it works out as the mayor and everybody plans it," Watson said of the Arts District. "I think it's great, but I'm just having trouble with going at it at my expense."
It could be the story of a hard-working small-business man who is about to be run over by a civic dream. Or maybe it's the story of a man who had the luck to land a building and piece of land in what city officials hope to turn into developer's gold, and now he's trying to dig in and squeeze the best deal possible out of the situation.
Or, it's both.
"He is negotiating on his side," said Jack Solomon, owner of S2 and a vocal promoter of the Arts District. "It's been his property all these years. I don't blame him for getting as much as he can, but it does hinder progress. But we're in America and he has his rights, and we have to respect that."
The proposal is to create a $1.5 million sculpture garden -- the money to be raised through private donations -- that would fill Boulder Avenue between Main Street and Casino Center Boulevard with 45 18-foot-tall stainless steel sculptures.
Watson's store, Creative Furniture, occupies half a block with frontage on Main and First and a parking lot of less than 10 spaces opening onto Boulder. He says the biggest problem with the proposal is that customers pick up their purchases on Boulder, which he would lose if the project goes through.
It's part of a grander plan for the arts district, the designation given to an area surrounding the intersection of Charleston Boulevard and Main Street, where the Arts Factory shares a block with Solomon's S2, a high-end lithograph company with an international reputation that moved from New York City's art-driven Soho District.
City officials and boosters like Solomon aim to transform the neighborhood, dominated by furniture and other inexpensive retail stores, some two-story apartment buildings and lawyers' offices.
The Arts Factory, a low-slung warehouse building occupied by art galleries and studios, and S2 are what could be called the "anchor tenants" of the Arts District, although other shops fit the mold boosters hope will multiply -- for example, the club clothing store the Attic is nearby on Main Street.
After years of talk, other recent developments -- such as the announcement of pending development to turn the nearby Holsum Bread building into lofts and studios -- raise hope. In addition, the city recently approved giving $55,000 toward hiring a consultant to secure federal grants meant specifically for developing inner-city neighborhoods.
The city also approved spending $30,000 for artist Yaacov Agam to develop a scale model of the proposed sculpture garden, considered to be the centerpiece of the arts district.
Watson, who said he has been at his current location for more than 20 years, when Main Street was "furniture row," said "Most of the guys for it are the people there that are in the arts. It's not going to affect them the way it's going to affect me."
Watson said he'll listen to any offer, but he makes it clear that he's in the furniture business. He admits that his property value may go up, and that he possibly could benefit from turning his space into a restaurant or building more lofts, the buzzword of the moment.
Developing lofts, he said, "is a possibility, but it's going to take money to do that, and how much of an income is that going to leave me? ... I know this will make me a living, I know the furniture business inside and out. I don't know who I would get if I wanted to open an arts store or something like that. I don't know where I would get merchandise."
Michael Mushkin, a lawyer whose office is blocks away from the site and owns several properties upon which he hopes to build, said that the bottom line is "the city won't do it until everybody is in agreement."
Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman, a proponent of the arts district, has said that the city won't use eminent domain on the project, which means it's up to property owners and developers to make it work.
Mushkin said he understands Watson's stand.
"I think Larry's a nice guy, and I think he's posturing. And I think he should," Mushkin said. "He has a moral right to take whatever position he wants and I want him to."
Solomon, who went through redevelopment in New York as Soho transformed from a collection of rundown warehouses into one of the world's foremost art centers during the 1970s and 1980s, said the model for Las Vegas is more like San Diego, where the Gas Lamp district was developed on a large scale, as opposed to the gradual, artist-driven change that started the redevelopment of Soho.
In such cases, he said, "one or two big developers come in with scads of money and buy up all the properties, if they can, before everybody gets stars in their eyes. In this case we've been talking about an arts district for 10 years, so everybody's holding on, and we've been organizing on a cooperative basis, because there are many stakeholders here."
Watson, said Solomon, "will get more money out of this than if he works the next 20 years there. ... If he ran his business the rest of his life he couldn't make as much money as having the luck to be next to a sculpture park and in the path of development, so I wouldn't really feel too sorry for him. He should be congratulated for being lucky."
Watson said he's not trying to fight it out for the highest dollar. He said he's never listed his building for sale, although he does see the possibilities ahead if he decides to participate in development of the Arts district.
"I've got a few friends and relatives I do need to talk to," said Watson, who has an attorney representing him. "I'm not in a fighting mood, but I want my livelihood to go ahead. I don't want to be in the streets in five years."
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