A Metro Police sergeant whose can-do attitude has created admirers of many new people and businesses downtown is a finalist in an officer of the year contest sponsored by Officer.com.
Police are investigating an alleged beating Sunday morning involving employees at a popular downtown bar. Police were called at 5 a.m. to the Commonwealth bar, 525 Fremont St., although the incident reportedly happened at 2:53 a.m.
Earlier this week, Maria Cuomo Cole, chairwoman of the board of HELP USA — which her brother, Andrew, helped found in 1986 to aid New York’s homeless — toured the 3-year-old Renaissance Apartments. There, in a complex of buildings at the southwest corner of Foremaster and Main, HELP USA has 50 permanent apartments for veterans and their families.
Stefania Druga is only 26 but has lived around the world and, more intriguingly, knows how to make a battery from a lemon, extract DNA from strawberries and create her own video games. Over two hours this weekend, she will help kids make their own video games from scratch using free software, play with graffiti, create a conducting circuit from dough and do other fun tasks that have a scientific bent.
Retired Metro officer has high hopes for celebratinglegacy.com
Wednesday, Feb. 20, 2013
A retired Las Vegas cop who saw his share of death in 34 years in policing hopes a website he has created will help combat some of the misery associated with death by letting the dead to “speak” with the living. Along the way, former Metro Lt. Randy Sutton sees his site as potentially life-changing. The site will allow "members" to store video, audio and writings that can be accessed by family, friends or coworkers after the user dies. It also can serve as a historical record of the deceased, which Sutton believes will drive those who use it to do more good in life.
Craig Adkins has spent decades creating efficiencies in production lines for a variety of companies; his latest job was as vice president of fulfillment services for Zappos. About a year ago, Adkins started working on a plan to start yet another venture — bringing shoe manufacturing, not just shoe distribution, to Las Vegas. With support from the Downtown Project, an investment group that includes Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh, Adkins expects his shoe-manufacturing business, Fremont Shoes, to open by the end of the year.
The city of Las Vegas' proposed state legislation regarding downtown redevelopment now includes extending a 20-year-old room tax an additional 25 years. And it's raising questions among downtown businesses.
New owners of Atomic Liquors on Fremont Street, one of the oldest free-standing taverns in Las Vegas, finally opened a floor safe discovered months ago during remodeling.
Downtowners better have a big appetite for pizza. Three restaurants opening this year — Pizza Rock, Slice, Radio City Pizza — will be added to four already selling pizzas on and around the Fremont East Entertainment District: Uncle Joe’s, Pop Up Pizza, Piccadilly Pizza Fremont, and, downtowners say, Luna Rosa, which is a pizzeria/Italian restaurant in Neonopolis. That makes seven places peddling pizza within roughly one-third of a mile of each other. If you think this means war, as in price war, that isn’t necessarily the case.
A Las Vegas man who became the unofficial spokesman for downtown’s Heart Attack Grill by dint of the fact that he came to the restaurant daily will die shortly from a heart attack.
A new book by the father of Erik Scott, the 38-year-old shot to death by three Metro Police officers in July 2010, describes a corrupt power structure in Las Vegas — much of it within the police department — few care to imagine.
The oddity of a free legal clinic in Las Vegas isn’t defined by the fact it sits under a tent in the middle of First Friday, a downtown monthly fest for art, entertainment and food. Some advice-seekers might appear odd, such as the bearded lady from a cancelled television show, but that’s not it, either. What puts The Art of Law Free Legal Clinic in a different realm is attorney Matt Callister, the man who started it. Talk to 10 people and you’ll likely get 10 different descriptions for the guy.
Imagine a world without cars. Zach Ware asked some 300 people to do just that, then told them how a system of bikes, electrical vehicles, buses and, yes, a helicopter, should be in place by this fall to allow those living downtown to get by without their own car.
City leaders next week will consider plans to turn a vacant, three-acre lot on Fremont Street into the home of the Life Is Beautiful Festival, a Downtown Project-supported event scheduled for October.
Businesses are slowly moving farther east on Fremont Street. Airstream 2 Go just signed a lease for land at 123 N. 10th St., at Ogden Avenue, where current-model Airstream trailers and trucks to tow them will be available for rental.
One of the first tech companies to buy into the vision of downtown Las Vegas’ revival has laid off several employees just three days after the death of its co-founder.
University of Iowa lecturer David Gould has created a course that links Las Vegas and Iowa City because of what’s happening downtown; it might not look like anywhere in Iowa, but downtown’s community-oriented redevelopment is the perfect landscape for Gould’s class, Reimagining Downtown.
Amateur sports is a $20 billion U.S. industry and some 2.3 billion people participate in amateur sports worldwide. In Las Vegas alone, thousands of people, young and old, play soccer, kickball, football, softball, baseball, basketball and more.
Under layers of old flooring, Kent and Lance Johns, manager/owners of the old Atomic Liquors, 917 Fremont St., made an astounding discovery recently. A safe.
Often, when you ask someone downtown a question about the latest local tragedy or political happening, you’ll often get nothing but blank stares. At times, those blank stares can be a blessing.
Many people know about the the 2005 movie, “Brokeback Mountain,” a story about a romantic relationship between two modern-day cowboys that won three Academy Awards. But there are so many movies involving the lesbian/gay/bi/transgender lifestyle that a gay nightclub under construction downtown will include a theater devoted to LGBT movies.
Justin Graham was looking to build his record label, Attain Records, in Las Vegas long before he heard of Zappos, Tony Hsieh or the Downtown Project. But the fact that community-oriented development is being nurtured downtown strengthened Graham's conviction that downtown was exactly where he wanted to establish roots.
Continuing its effort to “inspire and be inspired by our surroundings,” Downtown Project brings 13 people from around the country to downtown Las Vegas this week to talk about microfinance, filtering water bottles and all there is to know about rejection and how to turn it into opportunity, among other topics.
It goes without saying these days that all large-scale, light manufacturing — shoes and clothes, for instance — must be done in factories in other countries.
John Kluge Jr. grew up with all the trappings of extreme wealth as the son of a man who topped the 1987 Forbes list of richest people with a worth of some $4 billion.
Most people think of new taverns, eateries and music when envisioning the unfolding redevelopment of Fremont East, that portion of road east of the canopied Fremont Street Experience. Most people also know Tony Hsieh is behind much of the redevelopment. Hsieh is CEO of Zappos, an online shoe and clothing retailer. For that reason, it isn’t hard to see why much of what’s to come is tied into the garment, fashion and clothing business.
A long local nightmare with downtown parking meters may be moving in the right direction. Las Vegas officials will consider the purchase of 233 computerized parking meters that accept debit and credit cards.
On a tiny slice of street in downtown Las Vegas, in an area south of Charleston Boulevard between Las Vegas Boulevard and Maryland Parkway, startup companies are sharing homes and each other’s technical skills.
There may be no one better suited to configure a new way to practice medicine in Las Vegas than Zubin Damania, a Stanford-trained doctor who last year uprooted from the Bay Area and moved his family to Las Vegas. Joining an army of people lured downtown to try something new, Damania is dead serious about medicine — and he embodies a streak of witty silliness displayed on his website.
Three pallets full of vortex dome “stuff” have arrived in Las Vegas, now just waiting for a concrete pad to be poured at the site of the downtown Container Park to be built at Seventh and Fremont streets. Ed Lantz, CEO of Vortex Immersion Media, said the dome could be up in March.
A watering hole at The Ogden means some of the people who work online from their high-rise condo may never have to leave the building for nightly entertainment.
A war of juices is taking place behind the scenes downtown, as almost a half-dozen small businesses vie for space in the soon-to-be renovated John E. Carson Hotel at the northwest corner of Sixth and Carson streets.
In a 63,000-square-foot building near the Spaghetti Bowl’s flyover, a small manufacturer is growing larger with the help of business coming from the East Fremont Container Park.
The energy surrounding downtown’s resurgence isn’t all about turning the old into a new business. Some tapping into the human current sense it’s a rare chance, a small opening in the window of the city to connect people to people.
Grifters and con artists infest the world, but the lure of "easy money" in Las Vegas combined with the city's mobbed-up history has to add incentive for them to try their ploys here. Business owners, likewise, are always on the lookout for cons. Four women had a grand time dining on steak and potatoes and sipping drinks Wednesday night at Oscar’s in the Plaza at the far west end of Fremont Street. Three of them appeared to be playing the parts of grandmother, mother and granddaughter, all of them wealthy and from Beverly Hills.
The ShoeZeum's run in Las Vegas' Neonopolis was more of a sprint than a marathon. But Neonopolis’ owner says the departure of the shoe museum after only three months was according to plan.
A Berkeley professor/inventor’s talk about “cloud robotics” – a way to make robots more aware – is likely to stimulate the minds of some and confuse others Friday at Downtown Project’s construction zone trailer .
A gathering of some 50 people at The Beat coffee shop downtown was almost a throwback to the days when Republicans and Democrats acted civilly toward each other.
Startup Weekend in Las Vegas begins Friday, with the winner having the chance of presenting his or her new business idea to the hordes of tech gurus at next week's Consumer Electronics Show.
Some happenings downtown are hidden from the eye because they aren’t ready to be unveiled. Others are hidden on purpose, because it makes them more fun.
Much of life’s rich pageant strolls up and down East Fremont Street each day, hunched over and alone, giddily holding hands, staggering drunk or walking with the ramrod stiff spine of the self-satisfied. At least that’s how the people-watchers size them up. Who are they really?
Even an upset ex-lover with the last name “Wynn” couldn’t convince a judge that the Romanian doctor she showered with money should be found criminally liable for allegedly lying to get the money.
One largely unseen element of the Fremont Street Experience's New Year's Eve party is different this year. A relatively new company called TicketCake is handling ticket sales to the event. TicketCake is a downtown-based business, having moved here earlier this year from Utah after winning funding from Vegas Tech Fund.
Armed with a letter of encouragement from Mayor Carolyn Goodman, Steven M. Rutherford arrived with his own Las Vegas song, one he says is more up-to-date and ready to become as iconic as Elvis’ “Viva Las Vegas.”
First, Zappos and its CEO Tony Hsieh pledged $1.5 million to Teach for America, which will bring hundreds of new college graduates to Las Vegas to teach in economically disadvantaged schools in Las Vegas. Venture for America then received a $1 million pledge. Now comes Code for America.
A few bikes with back-end solar panels are on the street now. but only as tryouts. During the first week of January, a bike-share program targeting Zappos employees who work downtown will be formally unveiled.
A PBS film crew packed and unpacked its gear Tuesday morning on East Fremont Street, interviewing a Downtown Project employee in preparation for a new show to air in late spring.
You can’t swing a dead laptop without hitting someone downtown talking about “Downtown Project” and the Oz-like dreams of more and more development the project is expected to bring to East Fremont and surrounding areas.