Columnist Dean Juipe: Impatience may haunt the mayor

Dean Juipe

Tuesday, Jan. 8, 2002 | 9:51 a.m.

Dean Juipe's column appears Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. His boxing notebook appears Thursday. Reach him at juipe@lasvegassun.com or 259-4084.

As he delivered his State of the City address Monday night, mayor Oscar Goodman naturally spent some time looking ahead.

There were things he foresaw, things he envisioned.

But what of the missteps he might yet take that will influence not only the city's direction, but, more specifically and for the sake of this piece, the city's link with professional sports?

What if he could stand 10 years from now and look at what Las Vegas has wrought?

"Well, this is not what I really had in mind," Goodman, circa 2012, might remark as he looked around a downtown that included a minor-league hockey arena across from Main Street Station and a minor-league baseball stadium that was built on some 61 vacant acres behind that same casino and near the Spaghetti Bowl. Both facilities emerged from the drawing board in 2001, were approved in 2002 and completed a year later.

"Neither has worked," Goodman might continue. "The shame of it is, I knew they weren't going to do anything tremendously positive for us as a community, and now here I am a decade later regretting I had anything to do with them.

"That hockey arena was fraught with misgivings and political baggage I didn't need, yet I remember thinking it might be worth the risk.

"I see now I was mistaken. I should have seen the situation, seen that they were building an arena at the Orleans and let them have that ridiculous West Coast Hockey League franchise that no one really wants.

"But I can live with that mistake, compared to how I feel about this baseball stadium.

"What a dunce I was. I didn't want a minor league park, didn't want one at all. We had Cashman Field at the time and it was just fine.

"Yet back in '02 no one was stepping forward with a plan for that land, no one except some people who wanted to put a warehouse furniture store in there and that Southwest Sports Group firm. They sold us a bill of goods, didn't they? They were adamant that we could never get a major league team and that we might as well do their friends a favor and build this minor league park.

"I realize now that that decision branded us a minor-league town forever. It made it look like we were comfortable with minor league teams and that we would support them with open arms.

"Nothing, of course, could be further from the truth.

"Our residents and guests are worldly people who are not inclined to buy season tickets to minor league baseball games. They're indifferent to such things, and erecting this dinky little stadium on the most prominent piece of available land the city had to offer was nothing short of crazy.

"I should have held out, should have made my objections more clear. It's not like I was railroaded or anything, but I just felt so helpless at the time. As you recall, I wanted to do something big but something big just wasn't happening right then.

"So I settled for something little, something trivial, something inconsequential that really didn't do us a bit of good.

"Honestly, doing nothing or being more patient would have been the more prudent course. Instead, I have to stand here today with these white elephants staring me in the face.

"Darn it all, they tarnished my legacy, didn't they?"