Friday, June 13, 2003 | 9:29 a.m.
Frank Wright spent much of his career trying to set the record straight about Las Vegas' past. Now city officials are trying to straighten out a snafu over whether an entire local park or just a portion of it will be named after the late historian.
The Las Vegas City Council is slated to vote Wednesday on whether to name the finished portion of City Park adjacent to City Hall at 4th Street and Stewart Avenue the "Frank Wright Pavilion."
However, information in backup material for the June 4 council meeting indicated the entire park, which doesn't yet have a completion date, was to be named for Wright, the longtime curator of manuscripts for the Nevada State Museum and Historical Society at Lorenzi Park.
City officials said Thursday an error occurred at the start of the park-naming process that led to a city committee voting for something that never should have been put before it.
A the June 4 counicl meeting, Mayor Oscar Goodman had the park-naming proposal held in abeyance for two weeks. He said Thursday that he had met with Wright's widow Dorothy "and reached a resolution to name a portion of the park."
Goodman said it always was the city's intention to name just part of what one day will be a huge urban park for Wright, who died of cancer in April at age 64.
The plan is for the Regional Transportation Commission and the Citizens Area Transit public buses to move out of the city-owned Downtown Transportation Center in several years to make way for the expansion of the park.
RTC spokeswoman Ingrid Reisman said potential sites are being considered for the Central City Intermodel Transfer Terminal that one day will house not only public buses but also serve as a monorail station.
"The city wants to use the land (on which the DTC sits) for other purposes and we have outgrown the DTC," Reisman said, noting that the RTC plans to continue to lease the DTC until 2006 or 2007.
A city agenda memo released for the June 4 City Council meeting reads: "On May 14, at the monthly meeting of the Parks and Recreation Advisory Commission meeting, the park naming subcommittee reported the recommendation of R. Frank Wright Historical Park for the park site currently known as City Park. The vote by the board was unanimous."
That committee, however, met again Wednesday night, reconsidered the item and voted for naming just the finished portion of the park the Frank Wright Pavilion.
Elaine Sanchez, spokeswoman for the mayor, said a city employee had made an error in the original documentation. City officials, she said, were concerned that Wright's widow and other family members would find out and be upset over the misunderstanding. She said Goodman met with Dorothy Wright to go over the design concept for the pavilion and get the family's OK on the naming of the facility.
Sanchez said the reason only the finished portion of the park was intended to be named for Wright is because that is where the historic post office sits -- a building that one day is slated to be a museum, which would be a fitting tribute to the man who in 1982 co-founded the state museum.
Dorothy Wright could not be reached for comment.
In his many writings and interviews with the local and national news media, Wright, a former University of Nevada, Las Vegas political science professor, set the record straight on many misconceptions about Las Vegas, including exploding the myth that mobster Bugsy Siegel made Las Vegas a gambling mecca.
"Siegel was a colossal screw-up," Wright told the Sun in 2002. "This (modern Las Vegas) wasn't his vision, and I would like to make that clear."
Wright said Siegel never built anything, noting that Billy Wilkerson already was building the Flamingo and that Siegel muscled in on it when Wilkerson ran low on money.
Goodman, an attorney who has represented high-profile purported underworld figures, has suggested the old post office-turned-museum feature an exhibit on the mob and its influence on Las Vegas.
This is not the city's first mixup in naming a park.
In 1992, the park-naming committee was created after critics of former Mayor Ron Lurie became angry over the city's plans to name a park at Oakey Boulevard near Rainbow Boulevard in his honor. The council instead named the facility Rainbow Family Park.
The park-naming committee's first recommendation almost caused an international incident when it recommended the Asian-themed name "Cherry Blossom Park" to honor Las Vegas' then-sister city An San, Korea. The cherry blossom is a symbol of Japan, a country that for centuries was an enemy of Korea's.
An embarrassed City Council nixed the committee's suggestion in June of 1992 and instead named the facility An San Sister City Park.
The committee's second choice of naming a park for a child hit and killed by a truck near Gowan Road and Torrey Pines Drive also was rejected by the council. Instead, the council chose the name Children's Memorial Park to honor all children killed in auto accidents. The playground was named for Meghann Miller, the little girl who was killed in the accident.
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