Columnist Jeff German: Shedding light on Experience

Wednesday, Nov. 27, 2002 | 11:09 a.m.

Thanksgiving is usually a good time for elected officials to score points by feeding the hungry.

This holiday season your city fathers are looking to feed the Fremont Street Experience's insatiable appetite to gobble up public funds to further its private business interests.

The City Council expects to consider a resolution next Wednesday that asks the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority for $7 million to help the Fremont Street Experience remodel its outdated light and sound show high above the four-block pedestrian mall.

The Fremont Street Experience has an agreement with a Korean electronics company known as LG to upgrade the high-tech graphic display system for $16.5 million. Plans are to install a modern LED system, which will be brighter and require less maintenance. Some 2.1 million light bulbs will be replaced with 9 million smaller bulbs.

But the 10 downtown casinos that benefit the most from the Fremont Street Experience don't want to foot the entire bill. They're only willing to kick in $7.3 million. Another $2.2 million will come from a corporate sponsorship by the Korean company, and the LVCVA is being asked to pay the final $7 million in "recreational" funds it makes available to local municipalities.

Boyd Gaming President Don Snyder, who chairs the Fremont Street Experience board, said Tuesday the casino companies simply are looking for the LVCVA to redirect room tax money the casinos have been generating from tourists to the downtown area.

The money, he said, would be well spent.

"I can't think of anything more positive for downtown than the Fremont Street Experience," he said. "I can't imagine what Fremont Street would be like had it not been for the investment made in the Fremont Street Experience."

Beyond the positive spin, the Fremont Street people are reluctant to talk about the lighting upgrade until they make their formal presentation to the City Council on Wednesday. They don't seem to want to attract too much attention to the "proposal" until they're able to slam dunk it at the meeting.

They appear confident that the council members will like the idea of pitching the LVCVA for the $7 million and that the LVCVA will go for it.

A city attorney's draft of the resolution seeking the funds already has been sent to the LVCVA, which is being asked to consider the matter at its Dec. 10 board meeting, one week after the council vote. Mayor Oscar Goodman, the city's most persuasive voice, is introducing the resolution. He happens to sit on the LVCVA board.

So the skids, just as they were nine years ago, appear greased.

Strangely, nowhere in the draft is the Fremont Street Experience even mentioned. The two-page resolution merely asks for $7 million from the LVCVA "for the purpose of making capital improvements to recreational facilities within the city."

By state law the LVCVA, which evolved from the county's recreational board, has authority to hand out revenues it receives from room taxes for a variety of recreational purposes, mostly related to park projects.

In 1993 city officials got the Legislature to officially declare the Fremont Street Experience a public pedestrian mall, or what City Manager Doug Selby now calls a "public recreational venue," so that the Experience could soak up $8 million in LVCVA funds to build the original light show.

At the time some city officials likened the Fremont Street Experience to a park to justify the use of the taxpayer money. All that did, though, was prompt criticism from the public, which even then was clamoring for more real parks.

Today no one at City Hall would be caught dead calling the Fremont Street Experience a park because they know it has no grass for picnics, no swings for children and no fields for baseball. The only green along the mall is the green felt adorning the gaming tables inside the casinos.

City officials, from their past experiences, also are painfully aware that the public gets upset when funds meant for much-needed real parks are diverted to benefit the business interests of a small group of casinos.

If making the light show brighter is such a good idea, why don't the 10 downtown casinos pay for the whole upgrade themselves?

And if public money must be invested, wouldn't it be more wisely spent improving the roads leading to the Fremont Street Experience so that tourists can get there more easily?