Columnist Susan Snyder: A candid look at Neonopolis

Friday, April 19, 2002 | 9:02 a.m.

Susan Snyder's column appears Fridays Sundays and Tuesdays. Reach her at snyder@lasvegassun.com or (702) 259-4082.

Itoured the soon-to-open Neonopolis this week fully prepared to eat some crow.

For those who only read this when they're bored or forced to, I have been less than kind about the $100 million eating, shopping and entertainment complex perched on the corner of Fremont Street and Las Vegas Boulevard.

The project, which is the great neon hope for luring people downtown, has been plagued with stops and starts. Its original anchor tenant declared bankruptcy and pulled out. Work forged ahead without a single tenant lined up. And the ensuing marketing hype became a joke with four "groundbreaking" ceremonies in a year.

But three miles of neon lights are set and ready, along with a 14-screen movie theater and other entertainment establishments. Neonopolis will be 75 percent occupied when it opens May 2, Gene Sisco, its president, said.

"Hopefully, this is going to be the town center of downtown," Sisco told a group of journalists who took a hard-hat tour of the complex Wednesday.

Neonopolis will feature such anchors as the 42,000-square-foot Jillian's, which offers bowling, billiards and a sports bar. You can go down there now at night and see the neon lit up.

The neatest thing about the complex is the 100-foot tower in the center atrium that features 18 historic neon signs from all over the country.

The oldest is a 1925 vertical sign from the Strand theater in Shreveport, La., said J. Kevin Wright, of the Young Electric Sign Company. YESCO has been restoring and mounting the tower signs for weeks.

"I've had 14 guys working for nearly six weeks -- and that just out here in the field," Wright said. "I've had probably 20 more working on them back in the shop."

Many of the signs hail from the 1940s and '50s and are made of porcelain. All have stories, Wright said. One, the big red "Hunt's" car, has a bullet hole. Only one of the signs, for 5th Street Liquors, is from Las Vegas' Neon Museum.

Nancy Deaner, a Neon Museum spokeswoman who works for the city's cultural affairs office, says they are satisfied. The museum's plans have always called for placing its signs all over town. Fremont Street already has four others.

Two of the movie theaters will feature independent films. And just outside those theater doors is where New York art collector Leo Koenig will display what Sisco describes as a hip, avant-garde selection of art.

About 80 percent of it will be for sale, and 100 percent of it will be from New York artists. Neonopolis' developer is from New Jersey. Its tenants are mostly large national chains.

So I'm not plucking crows for the stew pot just yet. Neonopolis looks like fun. I'll go when it opens. I hope it provides tons of jobs and lures the people needed to make downtown a destination rather than the valley's ragged stepchild. We should want it to succeed.

Still, we seem to have little faith in engaging visitors with who we really are. Our new "town center" showcases out-of-town history, proprietors and art, while we work low-end service jobs and our artists continue starving a few blocks up the street.

"That's Las Vegas," one of the other journalists said.

Unless we quit building facades and hiding behind them, she may be right.