Despite sour ending, conference a success

Bob Genzer, Las Vegas

Wednesday, May 7, 2008 | 2:03 a.m.

I am writing in response to two articles in Saturday’s Las Vegas Sun regarding the remarks of New York Times architecture critic Paul Goldberger, who was the closing keynote speaker at the 100th annual conference of the American Planning Association, held here last week. The first article described the speech, the second described the concerns raised by Las Vegas Planning Director Margo Wheeler when she confronted Mr. Goldberger following the speech.

As a member of the conference’s Local Host Committee and co-chairman of Mobile Workshops, and as the former director of planning and development for the city of Las Vegas, having now spent almost 35 years to make this community a better place to live, work and play, I want to echo the sentiments of Margo Wheeler and offer a slightly different perspective.

During Mr. Goldberger’s speech, several local planners actually got up and walked out. Others, like myself, stayed to listen, hoping that in the end he would at least make reference to the fact that he was speaking strictly about the evolution of the Strip and not about the areas outside it that we all call home, and where some great things have been done, especially in our master-planned communities.

Since that did not happen we were quite dismayed that, unlike every other session, and in spite of the fact that microphones were set up on both sides of the room, no time was provided for questions or comments. The session (and the conference) simply ended.

In spite of the sour ending the conference was a great success, and not just in numbers. We received numerous compliments from attendees, many of whom had never been here before, about what they had seen and learned during the conference. The orientation tour took participants throughout the valley and showed not only success stories, but also areas of land-use conflict, which is common to all large cities. We hid nothing and we showed everything from which we felt planners would gain knowledge.

The Local Host Committee worked for a solid year to make the conference a success and we believe we accomplished all our goals, Mr. Goldberger’s remarks notwithstanding.