After spending spring break here, University of Iowa students in a class that focuses only on downtown Las Vegas have come up with something they believe will enhance the area. The upper-level students who spent spring break here and downtown as part of their classwork are going to introduce a vegan food truck to the downtown landscape.
It comes as little surprise that about a day after a 40-foot observation tower was erected on the site of the Downtown Container Park at Seventh and Fremont streets, graffiti was found on it.
Cirque du Soleil has a virtual lock on the Las Vegas Strip performance industry with seven – and soon to be eight – shows, including the upcoming Michael Jackson tribute “One.” But now you can even find the entertainment giant’s employees working downtown. They’re not performing. They’re sewing.
A few more pieces have been added to the Downtown Container Park, a project developers hope to have in place this fall. Situated at Seventh and Fremont streets, the Container Park – which has been redesigned to include more prefabricated cubes than shipping containers – will take up a half block and include enough spaces to accommodate 20 to 30 businesses. Monday afternoon, a 40-foot tower containing a spiral staircase was hoisted into place with a massive crane. The tower walls will be adorned with large-lettered signage, with a light feature affixed to the peak; inside will be a private observation room.
Nearly 50 former employees of the Gold Spike casino/hotel seeking jobs after the property's sale and closure showed for interviews with five different businesses or agencies Tuesday morning.
Some 43 residents of the John E Carson Hotel, purchased by Downtown Project investors to be transformed into a multistore retail, food and beverage facility, will get free rent for a month and be moved into a different hotel at the investors’ expense.
Under the leadership of new president Marc Abelman, the Las Vegas Arts District Neighborhood Association will honor pioneers of the growing district at a ceremony Thursday. Mayor Carolyn Goodman and Councilman Bob Coffin, who represents the area, will attend the ceremony, which begins at 6 p.m. in Boulder Plaza, 1046 S. Main St., and will be open to residents.
The Gold Spike hotel/casino will reopen again but its casino days are over. It might not even be named the Gold Spike. The Siegel Group Nevada announced Thursday the sale of the property to Downtown Project investors, who already held the note to the property. Terms were not disclosed.
Complaints about cab drivers refusing to give people rides for relatively short distances are fairly commonplace downtown. Just try getting a cabbie to drive you from Fremont Street at Las Vegas Boulevard to Soho Lofts at Charleston and Las Vegas boulevards.
Though Tony Hsieh doesn’t want to get into the casino business, sources say, he and a partnership of downtown investors now hold the note to the Gold Spike. A local commercial real estate developer, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said that means the Gold Spike’s owners, Siegel Group Nevada Inc., now make loan payments to Hsieh and his partners.
A colorful phoenix spray-painted onto the back wall of the defunct and decaying Huntridge Theater has led to a welcomed slowing of northbound traffic on Maryland Parkway the past few days.
A video production studio dedicated to creating content based upon the happenings and people of downtown Las Vegas is set to open this week. Called fremont east studios, it brings state-of-the-art production technology to a 9,000-square-foot building that once served as the base for shows produced by and about city programs and politicians.
A group purchasing property all over downtown is close to finalizing a deal for the 360-unit Mayan Plaza apartment building on Alta Drive, next to the new Metro Police headquarters.
Downtown Las Vegas’ popular neon sign graveyard, The Neon Museum, is extending weekend hours to meet demand. Tours will now be offered Sundays, every half hour, beginning at 10 a.m.
The skeleton of the geodesic dome that will be able to project an array of images on its interior walls with state-of-the-art digital equipment is finally going up in the Downtown Container Park at Seventh and Fremont streets.
A once-empty lot at Eighth and Fremont streets, adjacent to the coming downtown Container Park, is now full of more than a dozen large trailers. Not trailer homes though a rumor, however unlikely, was floating a month ago that the Downtown Project was looking to trailers as a way to fill a residential need as it prepares to move some 1,300 Zappos employees downtown this fall.
The two-day downtown Life Is Beautiful festival – a celebration of music and food – is scheduled for Saturday and Sunday, Oct. 26 and 27, and organizers have begun to put together some mini-events leading up to the fall festival on Fremont Street.
First came Venture for America’s college graduates, several of whom were hired by Downtown Project for two-year stints to study, learn and help startup businesses. Then a few weeks ago, 14 students from the University of Iowa in a class devoted to "reimagining" downtown Las Vegas spent their spring break here and will return this summer. Now students from Cambridge University – yes, that Cambridge, the second-oldest university in the English speaking world – are getting in on the act.
A downtown salon’s desire to hire eight stylists by the end of the year is being fueled by a resurging economy and the influx of workers to the area. Staci Linklater and James Reza, owners of Globe Salon, 900 Las Vegas Blvd. South, will stage auditions for new stylists from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Monday, with the goal of hiring on new people to meet the salon's growing demand, they said.
One more sign that the Fremont East Entertainment District is starting to come of age: Those superhero and other characters that populate the Fremont Street Experience were seen last weekend near Fremont and Sixth streets.
“Community” is word coming into vogue in downtown Las Vegas due to efforts of Downtown Project to create and strengthen community in an area where virtually none previously existed, along the eastern stretches of East Fremont Street. Late Friday afternoon, a man who worked nine years at Google and its subsidiary, YouTube, will talk about how the world is not only smaller because of Internet video sharing, it’s creating more awareness and forcing a redefinition of “community.”
It isn’t illegal to have open containers downtown, notes Officer Charles Stuart, who will talk about the issue to local media Friday. But it is illegal, he said, if the alcohol is not purchased from a downtown establishment.
The purchase of downtown — well, a good bunch of it, anyway — is almost complete. Downtown Project insiders call the mass of land stretching over several blocks from Las Vegas Boulevard to Maryland Parkway “the llama,” because that’s what it sort of resembles from space.
A local fourth-grade artist and an Irish folk music legend are teaming up Easter Sunday for an art show and concert to benefit Casa de Luz, which serves the poor in downtown’s Naked City.
Fourteen University of Iowa students involved in a class called “Reimagining Downtown” are finished with their spring break in Las Vegas. Now they're focused exclusively on creating something that benefits downtown Las Vegas.
A 24-year-old man who allegedly caused some $20,000 in damage by his scrawling his graffiti moniker, “VOTER,” in permanent marker throughout the Commonwealth bar is being charged with a felony.
The seafoam-rimmed sunglasses and matching bow in her blond hair aren’t right. If you have to put a finger on the problem, it’s her name. “Krissee DANGER.” The name doesn’t fit the glasses and ribbon. It doesn’t fit the person. There appears nothing dangerous about her. Don’t believe me: Take the word of the people she meets almost daily giving tours for the Downtown Project, where she takes visitors even into the private sanctum of Tony Hsieh’s condo on the 23rd floor of the Ogden.
By pushing services onto the Internet that used to require a visit to City Hall, Las Vegas – like other cities around the country – is trying to make life easier through technology. But also like other cities, Las Vegas’ website is so hard to figure out, many of the services city residents might want to use – downloading documents or filling out forms online, for example – either don’t exist, are hard to use or nearly impossible to find.
A bartending contest in the Fremont East Entertainment District? Can a roaring volcano, German tiger tamers and dancing waters at the El Cortez be far behind?
Fear is growing among downtown supporters that if a bill to extend the life of Las Vegas’ redevelopment agency fails in the Legislature, downtown’s ongoing revival could face a serious setback.
Another day downtown, another interesting character finds his way into The Beat coffeehouse. But none may have found themselves in as familiar territory as Matt Heller. See, Heller is considered an expert on millennials, who are also sometimes referred to as the Echo Boom generation or Generation Y.
In a city where the sacrosanct rite of marriage has become an industry that caters to an endless array of interests or fetishes, a new version will be christened the first week of April.
To accommodate Mint 400 race attendees and partiers downtown, the city wants people to know there will be plenty of parking available over the weekend.
Armed with tiny body cameras and dispensing advice for free, members of a street-level concierge service known as Downtown Rangers are the newest additions to the Fremont East Entertainment District.
In a move that some will see as a blow to the growing Las Vegas tech community, Romotive, a personal robotics company that quickly saw its fortunes rise after moving to the city in 2011, is leaving for the Bay Area.
Of the 12, seven are from Reno area, five from Las Vegas
Friday, March 15, 2013
Judges have selected 12 business startup finalists to vie for a $100,000 prize offered by the state’s economic development division and private donors. Project Vesto announced the finalists Thursday.
A Reno public relations firm is adding an office in the Emergency Arts building on Fremont Street, aiming its focus on the growing tech startup business environment in Las Vegas.
For well over a decade, art has been part of the planned rebirth of downtown Las Vegas. So it came as something of a shock to downtowners a few weeks ago when Las Vegas Councilman Bob Beers suggested eliminating the city’s Percent for the Arts program.
Claire Jane Vranian’s obsession with fashion and feathers, combined with an innate need to be creative, led to an association with Joe Elliott, lead singer for the iconic ‘80s rock band Def Leppard, and success in the clothing business.
Within the next several months, Las Vegas will unveil free wireless Internet access in a limited downtown area. Jace Radke, city spokesman, said free Wi-Fi would be activated in two phases: The first phase will include an area bound by Charleston Boulevard on the south, U.S. 95 to the north, Interstate 15 to the west and Eighth Street to the east.
So a choreographer, serial entrepreneur, nuclear scientist, food engineer, futurist, cancer-detector inventor, multisense designer and violinist all got together one day. And the punchline? There isn’t one. This is actually happening and you can watch it all via livestream video in the downtown Construction Zone speakers space, 158 S. Seventh St., through Friday.