LV rivals Big Apple

Ed Koch and Jace Radke

Tuesday, Jan. 2, 2001 | 11:24 a.m.

It took New York City's Times Square about a century to evolve into the New Year's Eve celebration capital of the world, but it has taken Las Vegas less than a decade to become a contender for that title.

"We are being mentioned in the same breath as Times Square, and they had a real big jump on us," Rob Powers, spokesman for the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority, said this morning.

"Las Vegas has established a New Year's Eve tradition that we would like to see continue. We are the Times Square of the West."

A breath-taking, half-million-dollar fireworks display from the rooftops of major Strip resorts Monday was televised via satellite to networks all over the world, but Powers said it has not yet been determined whether fireworks will become part of the continuing Las Vegas New Year's street tradition.

"We will talk about it, but we are not sure if we are ready to commit to fireworks in the future," Powers said, noting that the weekend fireworks display was a joint effort of the LVCVA and Las Vegas Events.

It was only in the last decade that crowds have even been permitted to gather on the Strip. For many years the mindset was for police to move large groups of people along the Strip and into casinos to gamble.

"This shows that our population has grown significantly and we have matured as a tourist destination," Powers said. "Twenty years ago the philosophy was to not provide fine restaurants and large shopping facilities, because they thought it would take away from gambling. We now know that is not the case.

"People filled the streets on New Year's Eve, yet the casinos were still full. Some people come here just to be part of the big crowds on the Strip and downtown to welcome in the New Year."

An estimated 263,000 visitors came to town for the three-day holiday weekend and spent an estimated $154 million in non-gaming revenues, Powers said, noting that no statistics are available on the amount of revenue generated at the gaming tables and slot machines.

An estimated crowd of 300,000 to 350,000 revelers -- locals comprised a significant part of the gatherings on Las Vegas Boulevard and under downtown's Fremont Street Experience -- was pretty well behaved, safety officials said.

No major problems were reported by police and other emergency personnel who gathered at the Clark County Emergency Operations Center, waiting to respond to incidents that never happened.

"We were really happy with the way it went," said Metro Police spokesman Sgt. Chris Darcy, who was stationed at the operations center. "It didn't seem like the crowds were as unruly as last year. The security guards and all of our partners did a good job, and it was pretty quiet."

Clark County spokesman Doug Bradford estimated that more than 350,000 people gathered on Las Vegas Boulevard throughout the night.

Other estimates pegged the crowd at greater than 300,000 people -- well above last year's estimated 251,000.

Police made 183 arrests, including 46 juveniles, on Las Vegas Boulevard, and another 14 arrests at the Fremont Street Experience.

Unlike last year there didn't seem to be an abundance of people attempting to climb light poles along the Strip, Darcy said.

"Maybe they heard what happened last year and decided that it wasn't such a good idea," Darcy said.

Seconds before midnight on Dec. 31, 1999, 26-year-old Menlo Park, Calif., native Todd Surmon died after climbing a light pole in front of the Paris hotel-casino, then trying to walk across the outstretched arm of the pole over the Strip. Surmon fell from his perch, grabbing an electrical wire before hitting his head on the ground.

Police once again used metal barricades to great success in helping to control the crowd and to easily shut down and open Las Vegas Boulevard to traffic. By 7 p.m. police had closed the Strip from Sahara to Tropicana avenues, and later closed the roadway to Russell Road.

Full of pedestrians, the Strip became a prime viewing area for the 13,000-shell firework show that lasted for nearly 10 minutes. The Clark County Fire Department reported that no one was injured or burned by any debris from the show.

By 2:15 a.m. Las Vegas Boulevard was reopened and street cleaners were moving up and down the street, helping to pick up an estimated 150 tons of trash.

Twelve hours later cars headed southbound on Interstate 15 were moving just as slowly as the street cleaners, as visitors from California flooded the freeway to head home.

By 5 p.m. a steady line of red tail lights could be seen stretching to the horizon from the south end of the Strip, and the Nevada Highway Patrol estimated that anyone heading from Las Vegas to Los Angeles had a drive of 10 hours ahead of them, compared with the usual five hours.

"This isn't that unusual for a holiday weekend in Las Vegas," highway patrol spokesman Alan Davidson said. "We're looking at a 10-hour total in travel time for these people trying to get home."

The highway patrol shut down the old highway between Las Vegas and Jean, because the overflow traffic on the roadway was causing traffic problems in Jean, and because the highway patrol wanted to use the roadway for emergency vehicle traffic in case of an accident on I-15.

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