A new vision for the area around Cashman Center

Monday, April 25, 2016 | 2 a.m.

The older a city becomes, the more challenging it is to refashion its existing and aging neighborhoods, whether to breathe new life into them or to shift their purpose. Downtown areas likely are well established, retail malls line busy thoroughfares, and while some housing typically is available in more concentrated sections of the city, most newer housing opportunities are situated further out, in dedicated residential neighborhoods.

A bit more than 100 years old, Las Vegas is close to getting to a point of missed opportunities. Ours is the youngest urban core of any city in the country with a population of more than 1 million. And while much of Las Vegas long has been set in place, there still is wiggle room to be creative and give neighborhoods a relevant and justifiable makeover in the name of improving quality of life.

To their credit, Las Vegas officials are doing just that, having commissioned urban planning consultants to take a second look at districts in the downtown area and to brainstorm how they can be better fleshed out, or tweaked, to make them something more special.

The consultants have been at it for a year and this month turned over their suggestions to City Hall. Some hard decisions are expected by the end of the year on ways to dress up and introduce more specific land uses to such neighborhoods as the Arts District, the Medical District on Charleston Boulevard, historic West Las Vegas, the East Fremont entertainment district, Symphony Park, the downtown office core and the area surrounding Cashman Center.

It’s that last neighborhood in particular, on the southeast corner of Las Vegas Boulevard North and East Washington Avenue, for which the consultants have developed some smart proposals based on their own insights and input from a series of public meetings. Key among them: turn Cashman Field into a stadium for a professional soccer team (assuming the 51s minor league baseball team relocates to a new home in Summerlin by then). The stadium would be surrounded by stores, restaurants and bars, and a “green lawn” for free-form play, festivals, tailgating and community events.

Alongside the stadium would rise a mix of condos, townhomes, apartments and duplexes, with neighborhood-friendly convenience stores, to provide more housing opportunities for those who enjoy the energy of downtown living. Nearby would be a transit plaza for a light-rail station, bike-sharing, dining and small offices.

We generally applaud this vision for the Cashman District, but we want to introduce another possibility, and it harkens back to soccer. On two separate weekends during the past six months, a combined 1,000 youth soccer teams — not just from across the country but from around the world — converged on Las Vegas for invitational soccer tournaments. Combined, they were estimated to have added more than $20 million to our economy. The teams played at soccer complexes throughout the valley.

In fact, 18 multi-day tournaments are held in Las Vegas throughout the year, up from 13 just a few years ago, as soccer continues to explode in popularity. We’re at capacity, and more fields are needed. What could be a more appropriate venue for new soccer fields than alongside a stadium that hosts a professional team?

Yes, there is a cost to maintaining fields, some of which need to be rotated out of use to protect the grass. But soccer fields should be viewed as a tourism and business investment, as well as an investment in the quality of life enjoyed by our own youngsters who live here.

In a city that caters largely to adults, let’s step it up for our children. A soccer stadium is better suited to frame outdoor recreational opportunities for our youngsters than downtown housing.