Mayor hoping to seal a deal

Diana Sahagun

Friday, Dec. 14, 2001 | 10:26 a.m.

If the city of Las Vegas plans to market its official seal for use by an Internet casino, it would likely bear the image that some city officials have grown to hate.

At the beginning of the year, just as Mayor Oscar Goodman was reviving the idea of selling the city's official name and seal to an Internet casino, the mayor mentioned his distaste for the seal, which he said needed updating.

Goodman on Thursday met with an online casino to discuss the use of the city's name and seal, the third such meeting in less than one month. The deal could result in millions of dollars to city coffers.

Goodman said if the seal were sold to an online casino, it would likely carry its current image. City staffers have estimated that changing the seal -- which is embedded on everything from official vehicles to stationery -- would cost $1 million to $2 million.

"It's a cost I just can't justify at this time, in this economy," Goodman said.

The city's seal includes the sun rising over a mountain with a jet flying overhead. In the center, a large skyscraper rises from what appears to be the Colorado River at the base of Hoover Dam. The jet almost appears to slice through the skyscraper, an image that some city officials have said is inappropriate since the events of Sept. 11. A Joshua tree is in the right foreground of the seal.

Neither the airport nor Hoover Dam are in the city, and Las Vegas has no skyscrapers like the one in the seal. Goodman told the Sun in January that the Joshua tree looks like "something out of 'The Simpsons,' " and he didn't understand why the image was applicable to 2001.

Goodman, who has been pursuing the idea of an Internet venture since last year, said Thursday that he would like the city to determine what it wants from a proposed deal, and then "let the whole world make a bid."