Some business ideas are immediate hits. Some take time and more attention to detail before they catch on. Others seem dead on arrival. In the “immediate hits” category ...
Early Friday morning, a lithe woman with a body fat of, let’s say zero, hung from netting high above the stage of downtown’s new Inspire Theater. Magenta, then blue, then white lights were projected on and behind her, as technical crews yelled incremental instrumental changes back and forth.
There may be no better way to commemorate the life of comedic filmmaker and actor Harold Ramis than a showing of “Ghostbusters” at a downtown Las Vegas park.
Some of the pictures the society already has are ones you may not have seen before: Elvis checking into the Sahara a day before “Viva Las Vegas” shooting began; Liberace standing by his car talking to a priest; and Lloyd George as a young man in 1947.
Until today, little new information has emerged about renovating the historic Huntridge Theater. But late this morning, a crew with a hydraulic cherry picker began to erect a massive square banner on the building.
A former Las Vegas food truck operator turned festival-food honcho may be on the verge of reality TV stardom in a show featuring a food trucks-and-chefs competition she started some two years ago.
The third annual Color Run on Saturday morning is a fun event for runners, who end the race covered in a rainbow of colored powder sprayed on them at different intervals over a course of about three miles. But the run, one of at least a half dozen planned to wind their way through downtown over a few months, along with various parades also using downtown as staging area, aren’t always planned with local businesses in mind.
Metro Police are about to embark on a new initiative meant to lessen the intensity of traffic and criminal activity in a downtown area growing increasingly congested with homeless people. What’s happening, said Metro Capt. Shawn Anderson, is that people who want to help the homeless will drive to the area to drop off food, clothes or other items near North Main Street and Foremaster Lane.
A Fremont Street Experience retailer on Wednesday could lose its right to sell beer and wine, and it may be just the beginning of an effort by city officials to stem the tide of booze-related businesses opening downtown.
The usr/lib, one of the first places to establish the idea that, beyond casinos and bars, downtown could be home to those interested in the tech industry, has closed.
A benefit concert to collect new or slightly used clothing for the Las Vegas Rescue Mission will take place Friday, Feb. 21, at Backstage Bar and Billiards at the corner of Fremont and 6th streets.
in 1992 when Mayra Politis founded The Attic, a vintage clothing store, South Main Street was a place few people visited. Fortune shined on Politis’ unique shop, however, when a national commercial aired during the final episode of the No. 1 TV show of the time, “Seinfeld,” and business boomed. After a transformer explosion closed The Attic, she has reopened the shop in another location, and the hard work begins persuading Las Vegans to visit the store north of U.S. 95.
Hoping to raise enough money to help keep open the only zoo in Clark County, Zappos.com will host some 70-plus animals this weekend on its downtown campus.
More changes are happening in key positions in the redeveloping and rebranding of downtown Las Vegas, this time again with the Life Is Beautiful festival. Andrew Donner, festival CEO, announced today the appointment of a new chief operating officer for the festival, Josh Ripple, who replaces Ashley Goodhue.
Technology isn’t there yet: Robots still can’t clean your home floor to ceiling. But a new downtown-based business called Maidly, about to launch in March, promises to at least make it easier to book a cleaning service.
Community and downtown Las Vegas have been inseparably linked by the Downtown Project since its inception two years ago. But months after removing "community" from its slogan of core values — community, co-learning, collisions — and adding "connectedness," the Downtown Project now has removed all references about a "return on community" from its website.
Downtown’s Life Cube is taking on a, well, life of its own. The 24-by-24-foot wooden cube was built last week on a poured concrete slab in the middle of the “llama” parking lot on the north side of Fremont Street between 9th and 10th streets. As soon as it was done, artists and non-artists started to paint its whitewashed walls. The upper half is being reserved for muralists, perhaps as many as 20 of whom will add their own flourishes to the cube.
With two months of operations under its belt, the Container Park outdoor mall on Fremont Street is doing better than expected, Downtown Project spokespeople say.
Is a "gayborhood" the next development for downtown Las Vegas? Maybe. Investors are pooling their money to buy swaths of property downtown in the hopes of creating an affordable gay neighborhood.
Seven years ago, Michael Cornthwaite was single, 33 and had just opened the Downtown Cocktail Room and the local economy was booming. Since then, he weathered the recession, got married, has a newborn and is about to celebrate the DCR’s seven-year anniversary.
This will be good news to anyone who thinks downtown is being flooded with too many taverns, to say nothing of those who miss a good old-fashioned bookstore.
Caesars sees the Linq as something so unique that it is considering the possibility of shuttling customers between it and downtown as part of the overall unique experience the development wants to bring its Strip customers.
Downtown Project will invest in an independent film starring 19-year-old Dakota Fanning. Chris Ramirez, owner/partner of Downtown Films and founder of Silver State Production Services and Lola Pictures, is listed as a producer on the movie. He said the project’s investment constitutes almost the entire budget of the film, directed and written by Gerardo Naranjo.
More than a decade ago, lawyers wrangled for years in court fighting for people's right to distribute pamphlets on the Fremont Street Experience, the four blocks of East Fremont Street blocked to vehicle traffic under a city-funded electric canopy.
Maybe this time Neonopolis owner Rohit Joshi has a hit on his hands. Neonopolis, long maligned because of the numerous businesses there that have started then folded, saw its newest tenant, the International Eatery, packed Thursday afternoon. Outlets for Italian, Asian and Mexican cuisine served lines of people who filled tables in space that was formerly occupied by Luna Rossa Italian restaurant.
Planning for the next Life Is Beautiful festival began almost as soon as the two-day festival ended in October. But one of the most visible and unexpectedly controversial parts of the festival — its street art program — really got rolling this week.
After a University of Iowa class used the city as a laboratory last year, a couple of Ivy Leaguers follow their lead. They visited town last week, meeting with people from small and large businesses, UNLV, government, neighborhood associations, law enforcement and, well, me.
A downtown arena is a can’t-miss business opportunity. At least that’s what a consultant concludes about a city proposal to partially fund and own an arena in Symphony Park. The $400 million arena could generate about $21 million in profit annually, according to the internal report obtained by VEGAS INC.
Their offices line the streets of residential area
Monday, Jan. 20, 2014
In this old Las Vegas neighborhood, most of the homes are occupied only during the day, and then by some of the city’s most prominent lawyers, their paralegals and secretaries. The area is known as “Lawyers Row.”
Scott Cohen just received a shipment of 22,000 pounds of wood. Now the real work begins on Life Cube, Cohen’s vision-turned-reality to build a 24-by-24-foot cube, and dozens more 8-by-8-foot cubes, fill them with the wishes of thousands of people, then burn them in a downtown parking lot.
Las Vegas Arts Commission members are considering moving one of two massive metallic paintbrushes situated downtown to create a more visible gateway to area’s Arts District.
The one company downtown that seems to get work environment right is also the only Nevada company to make Fortune magazine’s list of the 100 best companies to work for.
Protesters today delivered more than 100 letters to the U.S. Federal Courthouse in Las Vegas, urging Nevada’s congressional delegation to fight the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a 12-nation trade agreement. Angie Morelli, leader of the group, said the TPP, as it is more commonly known, would virtually provide the legal means for agricultural businesses to ignore any attempt at GMO labeling.
Suicide has become a topic of quiet discussion in downtown Las Vegas after a 24-year-old Downtown Project employee died after a fall from his apartment building last week. Investigators are treating it as a suicide.
Downtown’s urban-centered festival, Life Is Beautiful, has named the man largely responsible for the purchase of Tony Hsieh’s llama-shaped land acquisitions downtown as its chief executive officer.
Garth Brooks also has some friends in high places, it appears. Several people reported seeing Brooks last week walking around downtown with Zappos CEO and Downtown Project partner Tony Hsieh.
Here is more evidence that downtown's redevelopment has taken off: Ideas once merely discussed are becoming a reality. One of those is an eight-screen movie house, tentatively called Eclipse Theater, that would include bar service and a restaurant. Plans will go before the city Planning Commission next week, when the developer will seek a special-use permit for the property. Sharet Holdings II LLC is the developer of the 53,855-square-foot project on 0.80 acre on the southwest corner of Gass Avenue and 3rd Street, on the same block as Newport Lofts, a downtown high-rise.
By the end of 2014, parts of downtown Las Vegas will look much different than they do now. Old motels and hotels will be refurbished and transformed for new uses. Ground is expected to be broken on much needed mid- and high-rise residential projects. On the flip side, while redevelopment will continue, it might not come as quickly as some might expect.
A policy of randomly checking the bags of people entering the Downtown Container Park is no more. Michael Downs, executive vice president of operations for Downtown Project, said the policy is being dropped.
Downtown Las Vegas now has six, not seven, restaurants whose menus include pizza. Luna Rossa, on the first floor and southwest corner of Neonopolis, has closed.
The new Downtown Container Park has a random bag-checking policy that has upset some customers who have voiced their ire online — and park operators are listening.
Kevin Plencner sounds like a missionary ready to help bring about the second coming. His Oak Brook Realty and Investments is gearing up to be a major part of downtown's rebirth. Not only does the Illinois-based company own the multistory, public parking garage directly north of the Clark County Justice Center, it also owns a block of Casino Center Drive that it wants to convert into a mid-rise, affordable housing, commercial and office complex.
Murals, several stories high, courtesy of artists commissioned by organizers of October's Life Is Beautiful festival, transformed some of the ugliest, most base parts of the city's urban core into must-see works.
Although we’re still waiting for the indoor ski hill and bar-in-an-elevator-car Tony Hsieh mentioned a few years ago, there are a few rarities coming to East Fremont Street soon.