Council OKs acceptance of LVCVA grant

Thursday, Jan. 9, 2003 | 9:26 a.m.

The Las Vegas City Council approved a cooperative agreement with the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority on Wednesday to accept a $7 million recreation grant that will upgrade the light and sound system of the Fremont Street Experience.

The agreement also does away with a previous promise by the city to not ask for additional recreation money for the Fremont Street Experience.

Councilwoman Lynette Boggs McDonald cast the only vote against the agreement. She argued that money designated for recreational purposes should be used for recreation purposes, like parks, and not to upgrade a light show for a privately owned, albeit free, tourist attraction.

The Fremont Street Experience is operated by 10 downtown hotel-casinos.

Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman countered that the use of the money is proper and "the one thing we cannot afford... is failure" for the Fremont Street Experience, which 10 years ago cost $70 million in private and public funds to build.

By state law, the LVCVA has authority to dole out revenues it receives from room taxes for a variety of recreational purposes, mostly related to park projects. But Boggs McDonald said the use of the money for the Fremont Street Experience stretches that privilege too far to suit her.

"The LVCVA evolved from the Fair and Recreation Board... Its mandate has been forgotten," she said after Councilman Michael Mack asked that the matter, which had been placed on the consent agenda -- so-called routine items approved by a single vote with no debate -- be pulled out for discussion and a separate vote.

Critics also said the $7 million public fund bailout approved Wednesday rewrites history from a decade ago, when the city promised the LVCVA that the original $8 million public grant in 1993 to create the light show would be the last time the city would seek such an infusion into the project.

That May 25, 1993, agreement reads in part: "No request to (the) authority shall hereafter be made by (the) city for any sum in excess of the total $8 million herein provided for the construction, improvement and betterment of the Fremont Street Experience."

That clause was written at a time the city was under heavy fire for persuading the Legislature to designate the Fremont Street Experience -- primarily a gimmick to lure tourists to downtown gaming tables -- as a "recreational venue," specifically to qualify for LVCVA funds earmarked for parks.

The last of the original million-dollar annual payments to put the high-tech light show in a canopy above the four-block mall was made 2000. The new grant also will be paid to the city in annual million-dollar installments. The first payment will be Wednesday and the last payment is scheduled for 2008. The LVCVA approved the grant at its December meeting. The new agreement does not mention either the 1993 promise to not ask for more park money from the LVCVA nor does it make a new promise to not ask for future public funds should the Fremont Street Experience's new light show become obsolete by 2008.

The new light show, to be designed by LG, a Korean electronics company, will cost $16.5 million, with the Fremont Street casinos paying $7.3 million to replace about 2.1 million light bulbs with 9 million smaller bulbs that proponents say will provide higher density, clearer images. Another $2.2 million will come from a corporate sponsorship by the Korean company.

City Attorney Brad Jerbic said no city taxpayer money is being invested in the new light and sound system. He also said the grant will not diminish other park funds that the LVCVA has earmarked for the city.

Goodman said that with legalized gambling in 48 of the 50 states at a time when Las Vegas' downtown casinos are struggling, "it is vital we upgrade the light show."

"Our taxpayers are not placed in jeopardy (by the grant)," Goodman said. "I feel we should be supportive of the (hotel-casinos) -- the engine that drives us. The one thing we cannot afford there is failure (and seeing) everything go down the toilet."