Where I Stand — Brian Greenspun: Building a legacy

Friday, March 4, 2005 | 5:12 a.m.

Brian Greenspun is editor of the Las Vegas Sun.

WEEKEND EDITION

March 5 - 6, 2005

Finally, Las Vegas is on the map.

When Larry Ruvo stepped off a train at what was then the Union Pacific Railroad station in 1954 -- there was no Union Plaza Hotel and not even a thought that a hotel would one day be built where only trains had been before -- he was a very young man. The view, as you might imagine, was desolate to the west, same to the south and north and one filled with saloons and gambling joints to the east, right down Fremont Street. Depending on where that train and the people on it had come from, it is safe to say that there wasn't much in the way of pretty to catch the eye.

The last 50 years has been a fairy tale story about the rise to preeminence of Las Vegas as the all-American City, the place that everyone else wants to visit and many of whom want to move to in search of their own American dream. We have seen hotels built with hundreds of rooms and now, the megaresorts with thousands of rooms, set the new standard. As we look around the valley, building cranes are sprouting from the ground as Las Vegas' newest skyscrapers are growing their way up for the latest building rage -- high-rise condominiums.

With each new building comes the hope that the art of architecture will provide the grace and style that will mark the Las Vegas of tomorrow and set the tone for other buildings, private and public, that will make Las Vegas not only the Entertainment Capital of the World but also the envy of the art world.

One of the most enjoyable aspects of a trip to Chicago, for example, is the architectural boat tour that takes people up and down the river looking at some of the most amazing architectural designs in the Western world. It is not by accident that Chicago has set the tone for beauty in architecture. They started early, demanded the best and were willing to pay the price that has brought the kind of lasting beauty to the Chicago skyline that helps create the kind of environment for young people in which big dreams are first formed.

In China, the city of Shanghai demands that world-class architects compete for the right to build each succeeding building, a quest to not only become the city of the future but also become a city of enduring beauty and lasting design. It is a commitment of no small proportion because it does cost a little bit more in terms of time and resources, but it returns so much more by attracting tourists from around the world and promoting dreams within the people who live there.

For many years, I and many others have watched with some sadness the debate in public circles about the place for fine architecture in a world with tight budgets, no-tax mindsets and an overall desire to build functional boxes rather than beautiful public spaces. The reality has always been that to do the latter would cost only pennies on the dollar more, but the level of angst attached to those kinds of decisions forced the politicians away from finding the beauty in our world.

This past week marked a watershed in the architectural evolution of our great city.

There are few, if any, living architects who command the presence of Frank Gehry. Wherever he designs, people come. They not only enjoy the free form and function that he combines in his work but they also rejoice in the simple fact that Gehry designed the project. He may not understand the analogy, but having a Gehry design in Las Vegas will do for tomorrow what Howard Hughes did for a foundering tourist town in the 1960s and what Steve Wynn did for a city in need of a new look and feel in the late 1980s. In short, Frank Gehry has the ability to transform our town.

So, now we go back to the Union Pacific Railroad yard and that young boy named Larry Ruvo who stepped off a train so many years ago, making Las Vegas his home and bettering this city every day of his life.

He calls it a driver's distance away but most golfers would use a five iron to reach across the railroad tracks to the site of what will soon be the Lou Ruvo Alzheimer's Research Center in Union Park. That 35,000-square-foot edifice dedicated to the treatment and cure of Alzheimer's will be the front door to the 61-acre development that will set the stage for a massive redevelopment of downtown Las Vegas. And to make sure that the front door is as spectacular as the work that will go on within its walls, Larry has stepped up to the task by signing Gehry to do the design.

I know that these projects don't happen just because of one person. Clearly there have been hundreds and thousands of Las Vegans who have stepped up to the plate to bring this research center to reality. Bobby Baldwin, Kenny Epstein, Maddy Graves and others set out years ago to raise the money needed to help Las Vegans who have been afflicted with this terrible disease. Their work and the freely given donations of many others must never be underestimated.

But every project needs a driver, someone so passionate and so dedicated to its success that there is no possibility for failure. That person for Alzheimer's has been my friend Larry Ruvo.

It was Larry's passion and his heart, which Gehry and his team saw when they first met, that convinced an architect with more on his plate than he can handle in a lifetime to make the effort, find the time and do the job that will make the Ruvo Center famous and Las Vegas even more so in the coming decades.

Our hope, of course, is that tourists a generation from now will come to Las Vegas to see the Gehry design and the dozens of other architectural wonders that it spawned. A greater wish would be that the building would still stand in all its glory but that the work done within it will no longer be necessary because Alzheimer's will have gone the way of polio or some other ancient scourge that met its match with modern science, no longer afflicting the planet.

And when that happens, somewhere there needs to be a record of how it all happened and who, really, made it happen. For now, my job is to make sure the record reflects that it was the work of one man above all others. And today, it is now the work of two great talents.

Frank Gehry and Larry Ruvo. They are putting the next Las Vegas on the map.

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