Las Vegas locals, tourists split on mob museum idea

Saturday, April 15, 2006 | 11:25 a.m.

LAS VEGAS (AP - Locals may have concerns, but tourists appear eager to see a historic downtown building converted into a tribute to the history of organized crime, a poll conducted by the city has found.

Pollsters surveyed 600 locals and 300 tourists in Las Vegas to gauge their interest in a handful of possible themes for a museum proposed for a historic building currently under renovation in downtown Las Vegas.

The options included a "behind-the-scenes" look at gambling, a magic museum, a "vintage Vegas" theme, a museum dedicated to Las Vegas icons such as Elvis Presley and Frank Sinatra, and Mafia museum.

Locals told pollsters they would most like to see the museum chronicle "vintage Vegas," described as the architecture, music and figures that dominated the city's landscape from the 1930s to the 1950s.

But more than 70 percent of visitors ranked a mob museum among their top three concepts.

"This confirms my gut feeling that the (mob) museum will be most successful looking at our colorful history," Mayor Oscar Goodman told the Las Vegas Review-Journal on Friday.

Goodman, a former mob lawyer, has been an advocate for the idea since first floating it in 2002. He says it will draw people off the Las Vegas Strip and into downtown, an area in need of revitalization. The mayor envisions selling merchandise bearing patrons' mug shots and booking numbers, as if they had been arrested.

"We'll sell more sweat shirts and hats than at the World Series," he said. "I think it will be a huge moneymaker."

But locals don't appear ready to cash in on the city's seedy history.

The poll found 17 percent picked the mob museum as their top choice. Nearly 32 percent of residents chose the "vintage Vegas" museum.

What eventually emerges at the POST Modern building, a historic post office west of City Hall, could be a combination of those two concepts, said Jason Gray, director of research and development for Strategic Surveys, which did the study.

"People living here are more uncomfortable revealing aspects of our criminal history than not. They're as interested in the crime fighting," he said.

A leading gambling historian says the role of the mob in Las Vegas has already been overblown.

"It's one aspect," said David G. Schwartz, director for the Center for Gaming Research at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. "If you look carefully at most cities in the United States - every city in the U.S. - organized crime is involved in one way or the other."

The mob's influence, he said, gets played up more than it should. "It's probably more interesting than talking about real estate developers, business people who built a lot of the city."

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Information from: Las Vegas Review-Journal, http://www.lvrj.com