Friday, Sept. 10, 2004 | 11:10 a.m.
UNLV President Carol Harter unveiled a plan Thursday to redevelop the section of Maryland Parkway that abuts the campus into a "true university district."
She envisions completely transforming the deteriorating shopping plazas bordering the University of Nevada, Las Vegas on both the west and east side of Maryland Parkway into "Midtown UNLV."
The revitalized street would feature a series of restaurants, shops, small-scale galleries and bookstores, several outdoor gathering places and possibly even a theater. The plan calls for the sidewalks along Maryland Parkway to be widened and the street narrowed from Flamingo Road to Tropicana Avenue to create a more pedestrian friendly environment.
The goal is to eventually create a "street scene" that will draw both students and residents into the university community and foster economic development, Harter said during her 10th annual state-of-university address Thursday afternoon.
The Midtown UNLV proposal is part of Harter's larger goal of strengthening the university's ties with its surrounding community. Her speech to faculty, staff, university regents and community leaders such as Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman and Clark County Manager Thom Reilly highlighted many of UNLV's efforts to support the community's needs through advanced research and by producing professionals that can benefit the economy.
The Midtown project would also be part of UNLV's master plan of creating a "major metropolitan research university," Harter said.
"What we may have underestimated in the past -- and what is clearer to me every day -- is how the development of our university links directly and vibrantly to the development of our community and our economy," Harter said.
"We are not a basketball franchise with a trade school attached," she continued to loud applause. "Instead, we are the center of the creative class that is transforming everyday life and the economy in all the great cities in the world."
The man who shares Harter's vision and who would make it a reality is private developer Mike Saltman, who owns the Promenade shopping center at Maryland Parkway and University Road. Saltman and Harter said they are already working together with Clark County and with all of the other private business owners and developers in the area to develop the plan, but Saltman plans to kick-off the redevelopment by restructuring his own three-acre property first.
As early as next year, Saltman, a UNLV Foundation member and major donor to the university, said he will likely gut the current shopping center and build in its place a midrise development with underground parking, first-floor retail space and then loft-style condominiums on the top.
Both he and Harter hope that that development will cause a ripple effect through the surrounding shopping center, with "good development leading to better development," Saltman said. Many of the surrounding businesses have become run-down and a target for crime over the years, he said.
The cost to carry out the entire proposal will be a number with "zeroes off the sheet," said Saltman, but almost all of the money would come from private developers.
For the university's part, the new buildings it constructs on the east side of Maryland Parkway will share the same architectural themes and colors as the redevelopment across the street. Saltman's new structure, for instance, will aesthetically complement the proposed $41 million Greenspun College of Urban Affairs to be built near the east side of Maryland Parkway, and will also pick up the colors of UNLV's new Lied Library, Harter said.
The proposal is modeled after the urban university landscape Arizona State developed in partnership with private businesses in Tempe, Ariz. The street that was home to biker bars and tatoo parlors 25 years ago is now a thriving university district that is home to art fairs and other modes of outdoor recreation, Harter and Saltman said.
Both called Midtown UNLV a "vision with a deadline" in that they hope to recreate Maryland Parkway in a much narrower timeframe. Harter said she hopes to see major changes at the main entrance to UNLV at Harmon Avenue and Maryland Parkway within the next five years.
Harter and Saltman, a UNLV Foundation board member, presented the plan to Clark County Manager Thom Reilly and commissioners Myrna Williams and Rory Reid, as well as several other county employees, last week.
Reilly said everyone was really excited about the concept and said they are going to be partnering with the university to see if they could make it a reality.
Reilly said the timing was perfect because it coincided with the county's efforts to revamp land-use plans there.
The plan was well received by the hundreds of faculty and staff who attended Harter's address in the Judy Bailey Theatre, as well as by the higher education system's Interim Chancellor Jim Rogers and by university regents. But all said community buy-in, particularly from the private businesses that own the land, would be essential.
"We haven't met a single person who hasn't been excited," Saltman said. "The question is how to we do it."
The biggest challenge of the proposal, which all involved acknowledged was still in the embryonic stage, will be slowing down the traffic along Maryland Parkway.
"We need to create a sense of place instead of a race," Saltman said.
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