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John Katsilometes
Michael Cornthwaite and his wife, Jennifer, the First Couple of Fremont East.
Published Friday, Jan. 22, 2010 | 2:21 p.m.
Updated Saturday, Jan. 23, 2010 | 10:32 a.m.
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- Michael Cornthwaite
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The check-out desk at the old Fremont Medical Building on Sixth and Fremont Streets.
The red-light district at Emergency Arts.
Mail slots at the old Fremont Medical Building, soon to be Emergency Arts.
More files at Emergency Arts.
To accurately gauge the viability of downtown Las Vegas, specifically the Fremont East entertainment district, watch Michael Cornthwaite. If he can't make it happen down there, everyone should beware.
The owner of Downtown Cocktail Room just off the corner of Fremont Street and Las Vegas Boulevard, Cornthwaite is pressing forward with plans to lure at least 20 boutiques, art galleries and various creatively fertile shops to the shuttered Fremont Medical Building on Sixth and Fremont streets. Set amid musty exam spaces, check-in and check-out counters, and a vaguely haunting X-ray room will be a collective known as Emergency Arts. This puzzle-piece project might be open as early as March 1 if Cornthwaite can fill the 20 spaces positioned snugly on the three-story building's bottom floor.
He's confident it will happen. As of this afternoon, Cornthwaite has secured 15 tenants, including a café at the entrance — where the medically needy once assembled is now where you might pick up a nice pastry. Cornthwaite and his fiancée, Jennifer Harrington, are partners in Emergency Arts with landowner El Cortez. They are giving themselves a year to "make it work" on Fremont East. If they fall short, well, Seattle's a nice city. So is San Francisco. It would be a shame for the city to lose these two downtown devotees and visionaries, but the clock is ticking. Even Harrington's own gallery, Henri & Odette, which once taking up residency nearby on Sixth and Carson, will move into the Emergency Arts project.
During our 30-minute interview Monday in the KUNV studios at Greenspun Hall on the UNLV campus, Cornthwaite talked at length about Emergency Arts, but also let opinions and thoughts on other Vegas-tied issues flow as freely as his shoulder-length hair:
• On working with El Cortez: "El Cortez is anchor of the entire (Fremont East) district. Their customer demographic is an older demographic, and frankly it is getting too old. It needs a younger demographic, and I think they're doing very well. El Cortez is the coolest hotel down there; the Cabana Suites are beautifully designed. ... It's a nice situation, and they are very supportive. ... When we had the (Las Vegas) Farmers Market (on Fremont Street), they supported that. They put flyers in the envelopes with the employees' paychecks, things like that."
• On the fate of the moribund 7-Eleven building on the corner of LV Boulevard and Fremont Street, a space that has been sitting unoccupied since the convenience store closed in 2006: "Since I started building (DCR), there have been two signed leases on that space, one of which was really never executed. The first, money was never collected and they just vanished, literally. ... But about a year and a half ago a group came in, showed a lot of interest, signed a lease and actually worked on the space. They demo-ed the adjacent space, so now we've got two spaces that are connected to each other for one, giant 5,700-square-foot space with a 36-foot ceiling inside. Unfortunately, they couldn't get their resources together, either. It was supposed to be like a live music venue, they were going to build a mezzanine level, but it was a fairly expensive project for the area, a $1-$2 million project. You know, they were about $300,000-$400,000 along, with no doubt they were going to be able get the money together. That was mid-2008, when everything started to fall apart. The Hive, is what it was called. It had lots of potential, and it could have worked out, but it's just been an unfortunate situation."
• On the fate of Neonopolis, which sits kitty-corner from DCR on the corner of Fremont and Las Vegas Boulevard: "Nobody has any doubt of the importance of Neonopolis in connecting Fremont Street Experience with Fremont East. That's the only way it could happen. But I take a little bit of a different approach in that scenario. I never wanted to connect the Fremont Street Experience with Fremont East. I wanted Fremont East to be locals-driven and have a locals-based clientele. I wanted a buffer between us and the Fremont Street Experience."
• On Rohit Joshi, who fronts Wirrulla Hayward, the development company that owns Neonopolis: "The gentleman involved in Neonopolis (Joshi) is a wonderful salesman. He has been to the club one time, and he has an amazing skill. I've had several meetings with him, and he has a very positive approach and he gets you feeling really good, and you walk out and you're feeling really good for about two minutes. Then you realize, something just happened but you don't know what it was, and of course nothing ever happens."
• On the proposed Star Trek Experience, which reportedly was on line to move into Neonopolis in May but has not actually moved in at all: "Nothing's going on. It's not going to happen. I would stake my bar on it."
• On CityCenter: "It's beautiful, it's an amazing architectural marvel. It's what I would love to see, what I miss in a vibrant city, and that's what we're trying to bring downtown, into the core of our city. I've heard them say that it's non-themed, but it's a city-themed casino. It's themed as a city. The really smart consumer won't buy into that. Who can afford to shop there? I'm not going to Tom Ford to buy a $650 shirt.
Follow John Katsilometes on Twitter at twitter.com/JohnnyKats.
The city is fortunate to have people like Cornthwaite who are working to make things happen. I wish part of the Govt bailout would have included financing people like him with real, thought out plans and executable ideas, instead of banks that bonused employees with billions.
Imagine what this guy could do with a couple hundred k? There are other people like him across the country who could take those funds and turn them into jobs, instead of ivory back scratchers for their condos in Gstaad.
i wish them the best of luck... if i had the money, i'd open something down there for sure... so tired of the strip... especially after working in the nightclub business for four years... rarely go there now... much prefer small local places... and without gaming... that's the best! -jeremiah
His club Downtown Cocktail is very cool.
I have known Michael since he opened and he is a 'one of a kind' guy.
Great location for metro substation, pawnshop, bail bonds, smoke shop or probation office - to serve the current demographic of Freemont @ large.
"Great location for metro substation, pawnshop, bail bonds, smoke shop or probation office - to serve the current demographic of Freemont @ large."
Aside from the inability to spell, I take it you're new to Vegas, let alone never had to go Downtown to get a Sheriff's Card back in the 90's... Probably can't figure out why whenever you say "Henderson", some people automatically show you their palms and say "Of Course!" either...
Downtown is a sad spectacle. It used to have a great, established venue for bands:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/beatnikside...
If Jan Jones hadn't been so egotistical that she needed to leave some sort of "Legacy" for herself to brag about, things would be much different. The foot traffic and core attractions would already be there, and we'd now be expanding upon that, rather than having to start from scratch. There would have been that local culture that we could all have rallied around and participated in.
I wish this guy luck, and do hope he succeeds. But this is the worst time to try and start things...
I think these people are brilliant.. It is the BEST time to start something like this. Real, grassroots efforts like this are what great cities are built on. What else are you going to do for the next 2-10 years?? Go cry in the corner while sitting on your hands all the while hoping that Mayor Goodman is going to ride in on his trusty steed to save the day?
Thank God for a little culture in the downtown area, even if that does mean that you may have to encounter a homeless person (quiver..quiver..oh no!!).
My hat off to El Cortez as well for having enough brains and foresight to work with these people and not being a bunch of Hotel/Gaming a-holes that think money can buy anything!
Brilliant comments by Michael Cornthwaite and I do not disagree with any of his points.
Comment removed by moderator. Comment was off-topic.
The positive changes that have taken place in Downtown Las Vegas in the last 5 years have been amazing. There are so many pieces to the puzzle. It's not all about the "large projects". The visionaries include each and every person that executes their dream. Many have done that over the past several years. As storefronts continue to close all across the valley, very few places have packed their bags from the downtown area. In fact downtown has seen at least a half a dozen new restaurants open in the past year alone. New retail, gallery and other businesses, continue to dot the downtown landscape. Going on Fremont East on a weekend night is a far cry from the way it used to be just 3 or 4 years ago. The street is bustling with people of all ages enjoying what the various nightlife options have to offer. Emergency Arts is yet another piece of the downtown redevelopment puzzle, adding yet another dimension to the quality of life that continues to grow and improve in Downtown Las Vegas. Every single person involved in any redevelopment phase deserves a big thank you!
How can anyone in their right mind say that gentrification is progress? An example of progress and revitalization would be for the medical building to reopen as a clinic which would serve the needs of the area's residents. Instead, we're seeing a businessman interested in using the gentrification of down town to fill his wallet and we're calling him a visionary.
UPDATE! The Beat Coffeehouse opens Monday May 24 7am...be there or be square! Bringing back a coffeehouse to Downtown...Let's go!
kaotikdreamer says angrily, "An example of progress and revitalization would be for the medical building to reopen as a clinic which would serve the needs of the area's residents. Instead, we're seeing a businessman interested in using the gentrification of down town to fill his wallet and we're calling him a visionary."
FYI, this building was part of the vibrant downtown SHOPPING scene in the 1960s and 1970s, not the medical facility scene. It was the location of a real, honest-to-goodness, multi-story JC Penney's back then, and a cornerstore to a shopping district where my grandfather bought custom made suits.
Nothing is more frustrating than someone using limited knowledge to push an agenda.
I have worked across the alley from the Downtown cocktail room and thought it was an abandoed business! it usually had dead plants outside and every so often different one are put in the boxed but I thought it was the city doing it or something!!!! there is nothing that indicates it is open for business- i peeked in the dark windows one night late and a man came to the steal door and asked if i wanted in and i felt like maybe i should run