Thursday, January 09, 2003
Copyright © Las Vegas Mercury

Fixing Fremont

A roundtable of historians, architects and other brainiacs remakes Glitter Gulch. Pardon our dust

By Andrew Kiraly

After a quick jaunt north on Main Street, the monorail hums to a halt and the doors hiss open. You clamber out with the rest of the herd and take in the view from the platform: a bustling, crowded Fremont Street welcomes yet another batch of tourists with musicians, street performers, vendors and even kiosks that, amazingly, sell everything but airbrushed T-shirts. There are guys blowing jazz riffs on saxes, jugglers tossing bowling pins, puppeteers, and, of course, the requisite human "statue" who waves when you drop change in his hat.

After taking in the sights--and pumping a few quarters in the slots--you venture east, where both the pedestrian mall and the Fremont Street Experience canopy continue on past Fourth Street. Neonopolis isn't the stucco layer-cake that it used be; it's been remodeled, opened up to embrace the street; across the way, meanwhile, what was once the first floor of an infamous parking garage hosts a cluster of small shops--a clothing store, a small, inviting tavern with a live blues band and a pizza joint selling greasy, New York-style slices--surely the staple of the downtown dwellers who live on the floors above.

Crossing Las Vegas Boulevard, which has been capped off in deference to the pedestrian walkway, you venture down East Fremont, where you spend a relaxed evening sampling the coffee shops, jazz clubs, bars, ice cream parlors, restaurants with sidewalk seating, clothing stores, art galleries and museums that dot the gritty but inviting avenue.

Keep dreaming.

Why not? That's just one version of a transformed Fremont Street as envisioned by the very informal panel we convened over the holidays. We asked some of Vegas' brightest bulbs one question: If you were king of Fremont Street, what would you do to improve the place? Some said make it funky. Some said make it longer. Some said get more people living downtown. And yeah, some said forget the whole thing 'cause it's hopeless. For his part, Fremont Street Experience President Mark Paris offered, "If I could do anything today, I'd keep things moving forward with residential housing and a performing arts center. Practical things like that will help the continued revitalization of downtown. Otherwise, I'm real anxious to see what these experts have to say."

These experts' answers are as varied as the characters (and smells) you encounter downtown, but they generally agree that Fremont Street needs help. If the fabled avenue is indeed the spine of downtown redevelopment, the thing's been a slouch in recent years, barely keeping pace while Strip revenues grow, the spread of Indian gaming keeps would-be tourists at home and locals opt to head to the nearest Station or Coast casino. And with the furor over the Fremont Street Experience "recreational facility's" recent pocketing of $7 million in public funds for better lights, the public is right to expect Fremont Street to stand and deliver. It hasn't been. According to various reports, gaming revenues--projected and real--are down, empty rooms are up and East Fremont Street is, well, still East Fremont Street.

Here's how to fix it. But first, a warning of sorts: These answers range from the common-sense to the crazy. Some will inspire eye-rolls--but more, hopefully, will inspire hands slapped to foreheads, as in, "How come we never thought of that before?"

Not everyone agrees on what does--or what doesn't--need tweaking. But that is perhaps the truest testament to the importance of downtown, regardless of whether you think it should be saved or shelved, razed or redeveloped. If nothing else, the fact that it inspires such visions--and such vehement arguments--testifies to its looming presence in the mind of the city.

Break out the hard hat and the football-shaped beer glass.

Extend the canopy

It doesn't take a civil engineer, or a behavioral psychologist, to figure this one out. Just grab a bench where the infamous light canopy ends at Fourth Street and watch the tourists walk east...slower...slower...and then turn around and scuttle west, back under the safe mesh arm of the benevolent canopy.

"Why don't people venture past Fourth Street into the mall?" asks local architect Eric Strain. "Because the canopy stops and you can't see people engaged in 'safe' activities past Fourth, plain and simple. The canopy acts as a terminus to Fremont Street, a self-imposed end to the activities. Are the shops at Fourth Street as profitable as those one block west? Is the Plaza Hotel as profitable as other casinos in the middle of the canopy?"

Probably not. It seems where the canopy goes, the money flows. And the seamy and the seedy will flee, says Bill Thompson, professor of public administration at UNLV. "An expansion of the canopy would give the street a new look, and it could extend the 'private' ownership of the Fremont corridor, and then laws would permit exclusion of loitering and streetwalkers."

Then again, remember how long it took the casinos to agree on the first canopy? Frank Wright, retired curator of the Nevada State Museum and Historical Society, has a different idea. "I agree that there's a glass barrier between the canopied part of Fremont and Neonopolis," he says. "Some inventive architecture, maybe involving some kind of shelter over the street, can visually and virtually eliminate that psychological barrier."

And speaking of Neonopolis...

Redesign a more open Neonopolis

Besides looking like a giant layer cake made of stucco, Neonopolis has another problem: It's not exactly architecturally inviting. This perhaps explains The Saloon's slow afternoons, and why you'll never wait in a lunchtime line at Panda Express. People just aren't drawn to the building.

"The design does little to embrace Fremont Street," Strain says. "The canopy tried to unify the separate entities along Fremont Street into a common theme. But Neonopolis seems to turn its back on this and say, 'We are important to ourselves and we can survive on our own. It does this through limiting the public's view into the square of the mall--and why does the mall need a square, wasn't Fremont Street in and of itself enough of a public space? I wonder what would have happened if the entire south face of the mall had been opened to the 'real' public square--Fremont Street."

A more open space means more visible people. And more than anything, people--eating, drinking, gawking, staggering--are the best people-magnet.

"As students of architecture we must read [urban planning guru] Jane Jacobs' comments on street life, so why don't we adhere to it here?" says Strain. "If you see people enjoying themselves in a public space, you're more likely to stop and partake as well. The volcano, pirate battle and fountains on the Strip don't make money in and of themselves, but they create a spectacle that draws people, and as people see these crowds, they're more likely to join. After all, are we not a society of followers?"

Close off Las Vegas Boulevard at Fremont

Time is money, and money is, um, culture. Tourists would spend a lot more of the first two on Fremont Street, some say, if there wasn't a major avenue bisecting Fremont Street. If Las Vegas Boulevard were capped at either end--curled into cul-de-sacs that could segue into parking structures--the pedestrian mall could continue east, and tourists might be more willing to venture into what the city hopes becomes an entertainment district.

Sounds wacked. But it's suggested by an official who has lately become one of the major players downtown--Barrick Gaming Corp.'s chief gaming officer, Phil Flaherty. The company recently bought four downtown casinos--the Plaza, Western, Gold Spike and Las Vegas Club--from Jackie Gaughan for $82 million.

"Having [Las Vegas Boulevard] as a major corridor acts as a wall to people's movement," he says. "If cars were detoured six or seven blocks east, like at Maryland Parkway, the tourist [foot] traffic flow would be greatly accommodated. It would make the entertainment district that much easier to flow through, and add more value to the parking garage. It creates that safe pedestrian area that people can bounce up and down." Heck, do it to Main Street, too.

What happens once those tourists and locals do venture east? As of now, they can buy a T-shirt, a blowjob or some crack. But many envision an East Fremont trafficking in more worthwhile wares.

Promote the hell out of the place

If there were as many Fremont Street ads as there were Station Casinos ads--you know, the ones ripping off that "Mambo No. 5" song--downtown might not have such a problem to start with. Flaherty says that'll be Barrick Gaming Corp.'s initial investment: not in the properties, but in promotion.

"One of my professors in marketing class once made a very subtle point to me," Flaherty says. "The adage that if you build a better mousetrap, the world will beat a path to your door is bullshit. If they don't know about it, they won't beat a path anywhere. If you look at the majority of Las Vegas advertising, the Fremont Street Experience doesn't show up too much. It gets listed as one of the things to also do, vs. as a perpetual New Year's Eve party."

Flaherty says Barrick plans to huddle with other downtown casinos to brew up a promotion campaign. Of course, he's well aware that the effort might be complicated by the fact that downtown casinos owners have historically wanted to cut each other's throats.

"Understandably, the casinos have an internal need to steer customers to themselves," he says. "It's not about marketing downtown, but marketing 'my place' that happens to be downtown. But I think we could succeed very nicely if we got together and promoted an awareness of downtown. They managed to come together long enough to do the Fremont Street Experience to begin with."

Frank Wright points out that it's worked before. "In the 1930s and again in the post-war environment of the '40s, Las Vegas responded to crisis by doing what it does better than any other place on Earth--promoting, promoting, promoting," he says. "In the '30s, the town reinvented itself as an Old West frontier kind of place. That particular theme has likely worn itself out, but surely an equally effective promotional theme can be devised and hammered home."

Make East Fremont, like, not ugly

"I call East Fremont Street the 'bodega,'" says UNLV history professor Hal Rothman, author of Neon Metropolis: How Las Vegas Started the 21st Century. "The first block east of Las Vegas Boulevard reminds me of Athens or Haifa, Israel, in the 1960s, or Caracas in the 1970s--the port city of the imagination, a place where cultures collide in a stripped-down fashion and where goods and commodities are exchanged in all kinds of ways. It charms me personally to no end."

Of course, a little bit further east, it's Crackville, an urban bay where the hard-luck cases and petty criminals tend to wash up. Rothman sees little to be done about it that wouldn't just move the problem elsewhere. But others say wonders could be done with a little spiffing up. Lesa Coder, head of the city's Office of Business Development, says her office is looking into refurbishments on East Fremont that would create a biz-friendly atmosphere.

"The streets and sidewalks need some repair and replacement," she says. "The storefronts along the street need new facades and some concrete needs replaced or repaired. I see downtown becoming more like SoHo, something that is less commercial and more intimate, where you will find street vendors and people choosing to dine at different restaurants or taverns along the street." If the city gets a chunk of grant money it's asked for, those improvements may happen sooner rather than later.

"Fremont Street can handle cultural infrastructure," she says, "but we need to have the physical infrastructure taken care of first."

Oooh. Sounds so gritty and urban. Why not do that to the whole Fremont Street Experience? Some suggest just that.

Fewer kiosks, more culture

The pedestrian mall is, if nothing else, slick. Sure, on any given Friday, some mook with a brown-bagged Bud Tallboy might manage to hit you up for spare change, but overall, FSE's pedestrian mall--under the vigilant survey of those shining knights in purple--is safe as milk. Perhaps too safe.

"Fremont Street must offer something for tourists and locals that the Strip and local resorts cannot offer," says Wright. "More canopy, more lights, more volcanoes and pirate battles won't cut it. The Strip can trump those kinds of efforts out of pocket change. One thing Fremont Street can offer, maybe the only thing it can offer, that other resorts can't is an urban celebratory experience. Not just musical festivals three or four nights a year, but street musicians, craftpersons and street vendors every night."

Wright points to Santa Monica's Third Street Promenade as a successful example of this--an example that took time to spark up, but when it caught on, it caught on strong.

"There's just too much of an air of gentility on Fremont Street," Wright says. "There needs to be more than just a whiff of anarchy. That's where street performers and vendors can come in. Ease up a bit on the pristine Disneyland hyperreality. Let restaurants, hamburger joints and beer gardens spill out into the mall."

Barrick's Flaherty isn't too big on this idea. "Then it becomes a circus when what we need is to make some money," he says. "This isn't a couple of miles of beach front, it's a less than quarter-mile stretch of road with people competing very aggressively for the tourist dollar."

Meanwhile, around the neighborhood...

¥ Extend the planned monorail. "A big plus would be if the monorail can run to the Plaza--and then on to Cashman Field and Cashman Center," says Thompson. "The [Cashman] convention center is out of the way and not utilized to its maximum. Downtown would be greatly helped with a monorail extension."

¥ Move the bus station out of the Plaza. "A bus terminal is the wrong image for tourists or locals," says Thompson. "I'd put it at the bus terminal near City Hall or a mile off Fremont Street."

¥ Convert more downtown streets to one-way. A plan by city traffic engineers proposes that Casino Center Boulevard run south, Bonneville Avenue run east and Clark Avenue run west. "It makes traffic circulation more efficient, and promotes pedestrian activity in that it allows for wider sidewalks and more amenities," says Qiong Liu, the city's transportation planning manager.

¥ Free parking--"without the validation thing," says Thompson. "If there's a fear people are just leaving cars--this can be monitored on a daily basis--overnight guests can have permits on car windows."

¥ Close off--or at least de-emphasize--the Fourth Street "branch" that comes off Las Vegas Boulevard at Oakey Boulevard. Strain says it diverts tourists and "energy" from what should be one of the city's best intersections, Fremont Street and Las Vegas Boulevard. "Tourists from L.A., Des Moines or London or even locals don't say, 'I can't wait to see Fourth Street,'" says Strain. "No, they can't wait to see the latest thing on Las Vegas Boulevard. This is built-in name recognition. Don't screw with it."

Is Fremont Street worth saving?

All these proposals and prognostications assume, of course, that Fremont Street and downtown are savable--and worth saving. But it should be noted that not all these would-be visionaries take such a rosy view of the city's core. Historian Hal Rothman characterizes Fremont as an "expensive public-private partnership that functions as welfare for an older and maybe even obsolete oligarchy."

He argues that Las Vegas has outgrown downtown. "Greater Las Vegas simply doesn't have a downtown anymore," he says. "It's become a Western American city, an interconnected collection of nodes, what [author] Robert Kaplan calls 'post-urban pods.'"

Indeed, all the amenities a local could want are just an SUV jaunt away at their nearest strip mall. "Why would someone in Green Valley or Summerlin schlep to downtown when anything it could possibly offer is close at hand? Until downtown can offer something unique to the valley, something that is not or cannot be replicated elsewhere in greater Las Vegas, it's hard to see significant change."

Local attorney Chuck Gardner asks whether Fremont Street deserves to survive. The recent uproar over so-called "recreational facility" Fremont Street Experience sucking up $7 million is anything but "downtown redevelopment"; he argues that it's just a particularly ugly manifestation of the hotel-casinos' parasitic relationship with Las Vegas.

"The dead end at the end of the railroad tracks has become irrelevant to everyone but a few dead-end casino owners," he says. "The Desert Inn is gone, the Sands is gone, and the Dunes, Silver Slipper, Thunderbird, Castaways and Old Frontier are ancient Las Vegas history. 'Historic downtown Las Vegas' is a myth propagated to take even more money from the poorest of this community to throw into the white swimming pools of Spanish Trail."

If Fremont Street founders, he says, they'll only have gotten what's coming to them.

"You can't sustain a community, let alone 'redevelop' one, by pushing people around for a larger casino in their back yards to take their paychecks, as with the Stratosphere's 'community redevelopment,' by swindling and insulting the public with cheap semantic trickery, as with the Fremont Street 'recreational facility,' and by taxing low-income property owners just to divert the money to the casinos from essential municipal services, as with the Fremont Street 'Experience," he says. "You can't lie, cheat and steal, then seriously wonder why people won't gamble at your tables."