“Criminal Minds” star and Las Vegas native Matthew Gubler is lending a hand toward efforts to buy, renovate and reopen the historic Huntridge Theater in Downtown Las Vegas.
After tavern owners last month expressed fears that the growing popularity of eastern Fremont Street on First Friday was creating a potential powder keg — one called the street scene “ugly” — expect a much larger police presence this week.
For commuters lacking coins, the city has found a way to swipe parking fees – one credit or debit card at a time. Installation began Tuesday on the first of 233 multibay parking meters that can accept coins, debit and credit cards.
On schedule to open its first phase on June 15, Krave Massive in downtown Las Vegas staged an open call for job applicants Monday afternoon, receiving about 100 applications within the first hour.
What’s odd about the man sitting on Fremont Street near the former mayor’s neon martini glass sculpture on the street’s median isn’t that "Clark" is homeless. East Fremont has long been a hovering ground for many of downtown Las Vegas’ homeless people. The area is changing, however.
After 18 months at Romotive, the smartphone-robot company that began in Las Vegas then moved to Silicon Valley, Jen McCabe immediately began working on plans for Fabbed Labs, a downtown 3-D printing venture.
In all of his travels over the past two years, Donny Squires can honestly say he hasn’t driven his multimarkered, former school bus into any city quite like Las Vegas. His 1963 Blue Bird bus — with the shell of a Volkswagen van welded on top and the faces of Shaggy, Scooby and the other kids from the Mystery Machine painted in the van’s windows — has been parked for about a week in downtown Las Vegas.
The Smith Center pedestrian bridge will be christened Wednesday morning by city leaders. Funding for the $4.5 million bridge, which spans the Union Pacific railroad tracks, comes from three sources: $500,000 from the Federal Highway Administration; $3.6 million from the federal Congestion Mitigation Air Quality fund; and $400,000 from the city’s general fund.
Actor Ashton Kutcher ate Thursday afternoon at Eat restaurant and toured some of the many Downtown Project undertakings in the Fremont East Entertainment District.
An unthinkable move just a few years ago may become a reality. Though four Starbucks coffee retailers already exist downtown, none exists in the Fremont East Entertainment District. That might soon change.
As Scot Rutledge prepares to leave Las Vegas after seven years heading the Nevada Conservation League, he has to take some pride in how far his organization has come since he took the reins. At the same time, he admits the environmental challenges facing his organization and the state are daunting. One of the biggest, he predicts, will be if and when the state starts to deal with climate changes brought on by global warming.
One of the newest businesses to gain support from VegasTechFund is Local Motors. Founded five years ago, Local Motors uses crowdsourcing to help in the design of a car, motorcycle or other type of vehicle. John Rogers Jr., president and CEO, last week was in downtown Las Vegas, where VegasTechFund is headquartered. The fund is a tech investment group whose partners include Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh.
Work last week began on the interior demolition of the John E. Carson Hotel, 124 S. Sixth St., purchased a year ago and now part of the realm of the Downtown Project.
One man is dead after an explosion Friday morning at truck-repair operation near Nellis Air Force Base. The explosion at Nevada Truck & Repair, 4915 N. Sloan Lane, is under investigation.
Just beyond the doors of the Smith Center for the Performing Arts, a film crew is focused on Charles Ressler. Living in Las Vegas the past two years, Ressler, a New York native, has thrown himself into various roles supporting and bolstering connections between the arts, culture and community in downtown Las Vegas.
If the walls of the Huntridge theater could speak, they might tell the story of Bob Coffin's first kiss. Or of seeing John Angus in stitches at the hilarious musings of Danny Thomas.
ST Residential lists several of its high-profile Las Vegas properties, including The Ogden, for sale
Wednesday, May 15, 2013
Residents of The Ogden high-rise in Downtown Las Vegas are buzzing about what they say is the impending sale of the building to a foreign company. The Ogden is an activity hub for the nouveau downtown tech crowd and home to Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh.
Galleries and art on display in the former examination rooms of downtown Las Vegas’ Emergency Arts building, a former medical clinic, will be featured in two events at the end of this month.
The moderate prices, Muzak-less atmosphere and care taken with my chicken caesar salad – no brown lettuce, freshly grilled chicken, just-right tangy dressing – of The Grill inside Gold Spike just earned my vote as a great place to eat downtown.
Uncle Joe's Pizza is staying put. I reported recently that the longtime Fremont Street restaurant had closed and would reopen in the Gold Spike, one of Downtown Project's most recent acquisitions.
A soon-to-open Italian sub joint, along with Mingo, a new bar/restaurant further near Casino Center Drive and Charleston Boulevard, might just give some of the new Fremont East bar/restaurants a run for their money.
Freeman White III has come a long way since his first film, a documentary about buffalo grass. Next week, he’s bringing “Five Thirteen,”a film five years in the making, to Cannes for the international film festival to show to potential buyers and distributors.
Downtown casino that brought shrimp cocktails to Las Vegas to roll back price of dish to 1959
Thursday, May 9, 2013
There may be nothing more “Vegas” than the shrimp cocktail. Well, that is after gambling, neon signage, diminishing water resources and the mistaken belief that prostitution is legal here.
Computer chips easily outnumber cowboys in Downtown Las Vegas, especially as startup founders and coders find sanctuary around East Fremont Street, soon to be the backyard of dot-com retailer Zappos. But Zappos aside, Las Vegas’ persona remains firmly grounded in the Wild West myth, and downtown’s Helldorado Days, a multiday celebration of the the West’s rugged reputation, fits right in.
The Gold Spike reopened this week with a surprising addition: slot machines. Technicians on Tuesday morning wheeled some 10 or more machines out of a truck and onto the floor of the business, which closed April 21, less than a month ago after being purchased from Siegel Group Nevada Inc. by Downtown Project investors. After the sale was completed, Tony Hsieh, Zappos CEO and one of the Downtown Project partners, said it would not reopen as a casino.
One of Downtown Las Vegas’ oldest residents, the El Cortez, will be honored for winning a listing on the National Register of Historic Places. Mayor Carolyn Goodman and Councilman Bob Coffin will headline a ceremony at 4 p.m. Thursday to unveil a commemorative plaque at the hotel/casino. The city's oldest hotel to continuously operate under the same name, the El Cortez became only the second Las Vegas casino on the nation's cultural preservation list in February.
“It was ugly” is how one business owner described Friday night in the Fremont East Entertainment District. “It felt dangerous,” said another. And "it" might have been encouraged by the city closing a portion of Fremont Street during and after First Friday activities. The First Friday art show/street fair is one of downtown’s biggest successes, driving 25,000 to 30,000 people to an area near Charleston Boulevard and Main Street on the first Friday night of each month.
Less than a month after it closed, the Gold Spike will reopen Monday as a bar and restaurant with a large area once devoted to slot machines now home to games such as pool, darts, Golden Tee video golf and shuffleboard.
I remember bits and pieces of the first First Friday in downtown. The October 2002 night was chilly. Someone had set up a small table with wine, crackers and cheese inside the Arts Factory. Maybe 200 people, more or less, were there. Unlike today, no food carts or vendors were on the street.
Playboy models from Buenos Aires invaded downtown this week, filming Wednesday night for Playboy TV at Atomic Liquors and Thursday afternoon at the Gold Spike. Kent Johns, Atomic owner, said Playboy TV was doing “secret spots” shoots in Los Angeles, San Francisco and Las Vegas.
A nearly hour-long power outage left portions of downtown, including some government buildings and at least two major casinos, in the dark Thursday afternoon.
The federally funded space shuttle program ended three years ago, a move that opened the door a little wider for private investors to do their own space exploration. David Knight, described as a “filmmaker/investor/entrepreneur” will talk about that Wednesday at the “Las Vegas Science Crawl” that begins at 6 p.m. in the Construction Zone speaker trailer.
With downtown Las Vegas about to see an influx of 1,300 Zappos employees in a few months, a major local developer is considering construction of a large, mid-priced residential apartment building a few blocks off Fremont Street.
With many of its former employees returning, the Gold Spike casino/hotel will reopen within the next two weeks as a restaurant/bar. As expected, the business will open without a casino. And for the time being, hotel operations are shut down.
Following a rented llama from The Beat coffeehouse north on Las Vegas Boulevard to Cashman Field, about 100 people took part in the first of what will be a monthly llama parade this summer.
A Las Vegas councilman wants to change a city code that forces developers to spend thousands to retrofit older buildings with energy-saving measures such as window glazing and insulation on cinder-block walls.
The scaffolding-supported zip line at the Fremont Street Experience is slowly being transformed into the $11 million SlotZilla, a slot-machine-themed attraction whose metal beams are being put into place today.
Vanessa Andrea has been writing and performing songs since she was 12. Her first was an expression of acceptance for her father, then serving time in the California prison system. “Songs have been my key to surviving,” says Andrea, who at 23 sings with the voice of someone much older. She said she has worked since she was 14 to support her family. “It’s gotten me through life, saved my life, really. Dad in prison, mom addicted to drugs. Writing songs helped me get away and communicate what I felt.”
A local production company today begins filming the antics, thoughts and lives of a handful of downtown residents for an Internet series that shines light on the people behind the area’s transformation from the forsaken to the embraced.
A Spokane, Wash., e-commerce site has bought the inventory and name of ecomom.com, a Las Vegas-based online company dissolved shortly after co-founder Jody Sherman committed suicide in January.
The monkey skeleton sign at La Comida, the new Mexican restaurant downtown, isn’t there simply because it’s unique, fun and destined in some distant future to end up in the Neon Museum. A monkey-Mexican connection exists: Mayans, who lived in Mexico, considered monkeys divine creatures. But even Michael Morton, who is opening the restaurant at Sixth and Fremont streets, acknowledges that beyond its historical take, the sign, conceived by his wife, “is a lot of fun.”
Fremont Street businesses will offer discounted food and drinks Monday night to draw people for the filming of a promotional ad for the upcoming Life Is Beautiful music, food and art festival.
The rumors are true, but you’ll have to wait. Sambalatte, a popular coffee shop in the Boca Park shopping mall, near Rampart and Charleston boulevards, is definitely going to be open somewhere downtown, owner/operator Luiz Claudio Oliveira said.
Hoping to add to downtown’s tech startup ecosystem, Jon Sterling wants to buy a house downtown for startup founders as they transition into Las Vegas. To do that, the 34-year-old startup founder and former real estate businessman is doing something he’s never seen: He’s giving himself a month to raise $125,000 in small donations, branding opportunities and other means.