Officials gear up for next round of thrill ride talks

Jeffrey Libby

Friday, Oct. 26, 2001 | 11:02 a.m.

A planned Las Vegas Strip monorail could be built through a historic downtown neighborhood if the Las Vegas City Council refuses to approve the Stratosphere's proposed 740-foot-high thrill ride, Richard Brown, chief operating officer for the downtown hotel-casino, said this morning.

Also, if the thrill ride is rejected, the company could pursue an active 1996 permit to build a "screaming Gorilla" ride that would go up and down the Stratosphere tower, Brown said.

Many consider the tower an icon of Las Vegas. That's one of the reasons for extensive opposition to the project.

It would be the world's tallest, fastest thrill ride, an attraction Brown said would bring 765,000 new visitors each year and provide the city with $1 million each year in new revenues.

Las Vegas City Council members put off a decision on the ride on Oct. 18. They are scheduled to revisit the issue Nov. 7.

Since the 21-day extension, Brown said his attorneys have attempted to schedule a meeting with neighbors and with Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman and Las Vegas City Councilman Gary Reese, who represents the area the thrill ride is proposed for.

But Goodman and Reese have not returned phone calls for eight days, Brown said.

The Stratosphere has scheduled a neighborhood meeting at Fremont Middle School for Tuesday at 6 p.m.

"If we don't get the ride, the monorail may be running through that neighborhood," Brown said. "That's not a threat. It's a fact of life."

Brown said if the thrill ride is part of a long-held master plan, and if that is eliminated, the location of a planned monorail station would be changed.

He also challenged critics of the ride's aesthetics. The ride would drop passengers 700 feet down the tower, across Las Vegas Boulevard and up a 415-foot tower on the east side of the street.

"This is Las Vegas and beauty has to be in the eye of the beholder," Brown said. "The people opposed to the ride are the same people who didn't want the Stratosphere tower built. Now they're saying the ride will mar its beauty."

Brown said noise studies completed by California firm Arup Acoustics show that the ride will increase noise in only two of eight area neighborhoods.

But Goodman and Reese say the ride could slow a growing migration of new residents to an area that in the 1950s and 1960s boasted the most desired addresses. By the 1980s, however, the area had fallen on hard times. They say revitalized neighborhoods are the key to a revitalized downtown.

"We've made some gains. I'm just now getting a little return on my efforts, so why would I shoot that in the stomach?" Reese said. "I appreciate what the Stratosphere's trying to do, but that project is about their bottom line. I'm trying to save a neighborhood."

On hearing that the gorilla ride could still be in the works, Jack LeVine, president of the Southridge homeowners association, which represents 900 downtown homeowners, said, "That's laughably ludicrous. To bring that up now strikes me as grasping at straws."

Brown says the casino is not desperate. The hotel-casino in June completed a $75 million expansion that opened 1,000 new rooms, he said, filling them to 98 percent capacity in the first month of operation. But if the City Council refuses to give the Stratosphere "the tools to compete" with Clark County casinos just a few blocks away, what kind of message does that send to other businesses considering investments in Las Vegas? Brown asked.