Columnist Dean Juipe: Fans find it’s a hassle just to park

Dean Juipe

Monday, Nov. 10, 2003 | 9:42 a.m.

Dean Juipe's column appears Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. His boxing notebook appears Thursday. Reach him at juipe@lasvegassun.com or (702) 259-4084.

Las Vegas doesn't have growth spurts, it has a constant growth wave. The building never ceases, as shown by the towering cranes that stand among the high rises.

The city is constantly getting bigger, constantly adding newer and newer attractions.

And yet amid the improvements and refashioning of the horizon, a callousness seems to exist. As was evident this past Saturday at Mandalay Bay (where Roy Jones Jr. was fighting Antonio Tarver) and was apparent two weeks earlier at the Thomas & Mack Center (where the Los Angeles Lakers and Sacramento Kings played an NBA exhibition game), sometimes as simple an act as parking your car becomes a modern day Assignment from Hell.

Despite the fact these two facilities are undergoing what should be a period of eventus interruptus, each nonetheless scheduled a major attraction at a time when both knowingly realized they could not handle the incoming crowds. The result: An alienation of the audience and a reason to never try it again.

Those people who had tickets to either of the events in question likely found a way to make it to the contest, yet many did so with a newly cast chip on their shoulder. Why, they rightfully asked themselves, is this event being held at this particular site at this particular time?

In both cases, alternate sites existed and would have been far more accommodating.

In the case of the Thomas and Mack Center, the size of its parking lot is not only being reduced by the erection of a new campus dormitory, construction apparatus has been spread about the area, temporarily reducing the parking capacity even further. A trip through the lot Sunday -- and prior to the final round of the Professional Bull Riders competition -- showed the construction equipment better contained than it was the night of the Lakers-Kings game, yet intruding nonetheless.

It now seems to be a given that anytime the Mack is apt to be full, it will not be able to handle the parking demands of 18,000 fans.

What T&M administrators did for the Lakers-Kings game was downright horrible, sending patrons to McCarran and busing them back to the arena from the airport. It was a terrible solution to a problem that came without proper warning, and one that left hundreds of car-renting tourists and locals alike wishing they had stayed at home.

I know that's how I felt while trying to park at Mandalay Bay for the Jones-Tarver fight. Fact is, due to the presence of hundreds -- or is it thousands? -- of pickup trucks driven by the workers toiling on the hotel's new tower and who are allowed to park in the existing garage, it couldn't be done.

Upon arriving at the parking-garage entrance at 3:30 p.m., or one hour earlier than the first scheduled bout, a sign alerted incoming drivers that the lot was full and that additional parking existed at the East lot near the adjoining Convention Center. But, in truth, that lot was full, too, and exasperated drivers were then directed -- ever so slowly -- to the parking garage at the Luxor, which was equally congested and inhospitable.

The only options: Either drive to another, distant casino and walk or take a cab to Mandalay Bay, or wait somewhere, somehow, and return later on the outside chance the construction workers would eventually be leaving and that a garage built for Mandalay Bay customers might actually be used for Mandalay Bay customers.

I've marveled for weeks that Mandalay Bay has been turning over its garage to its assorted constructions crews, and this time that failure to have them park elsewhere led to a serious disruption of service and goodwill.

Heck, I'd have made the hard hats share in the ignominiousness of parking at McCarran and taking a bus to their job, at least for a day.

Suddenly, the craggy, boulder-infested dirt lots at Sam Boyd Stadium, long detested by anyone inclined to see the UNLV football team in person, don't seem quite so bad. Rough as they are on a car's underside and body, at least they put the ticket buyer within sight of his destination.