LOOKING IN ON: CITY HALL

Sunday, Aug. 5, 2007 | 1:14 a.m.

There are times when you wonder, either downtown Las Vegas is getting friendlier, or maybe a weight is lifted simply by the fact that you no longer have to walk under the electrified canopy of the Fremont Street Experience to find life.

Crossing Las Vegas Boulevard to get to East Fremont Street, a reporter dashed even after a car stopped to let him walk.

"Go eeeasy, man!" the driver said in a mellifluous Jamaican accent. "You act like it's Death Race 2000! Ha-ha-ha-ha!"

Downtown's a different place these days.

Glittering examples will light up on Aug. 24, the planned dedication of a project to beautify the first couple of blocks of East Fremont. The section of road has been torn up and re paved, medians are in , and four new neon signs are being erected on the medians.

Where the street intersects Las Vegas Boulevard, kitschy "FREMONT" street identifiers are already up. And there's soon to be an arching gate to that stretch of road.

One curiosity is the main sign, vertical with the word " VEGAS " written down it. It sits on the median with two palm trees obscuring the bottom half. The coup de grace - at least for the city's gin-loving mayor- is a martini-glass sign to be placed just in front of those palms.

Another sign of times past, which this city all too often smashes rather than celebrates, is the La Concha motel lobby.

In 2006, the lobby was sliced up and hauled in pieces to the so-called neon boneyard at 770 Las Vegas Blvd. North.

And there it has sat, among signs just too cool to throw away but so far too expensive to doll up and make part of a permanent neon museum.

The City Council on Wednesday added the La Concha lobby to the city's historic property register. It's significant not just because it's one of the oldest surviving mementos from early Vegas, having been built in 1961. More important , it was designed by Paul Revere Williams, the first black member of the American Institute of Architects.

Williams, who died in 1981, came up in the business at a time when skin color still drastically restricted blacks' career opportunities. The story goes that Williams learned to draw upside down because he knew clients would never sit next to him.

But before people can walk through that lobby to get to what will one day be known as Neon Boneyard Park, the city still needs to raise $1.5 million of a total $2.5 million, said Nancy Deaner, manager of the city's Office of Cultural Affairs.

"It's a fabulous project," Deaner said, adding that some work will begin this fall. "Nobody seems to understand how close this is to completion."

There was another sign of our times - or maybe it's just the latest incarnation of a sad sign that pops up throughout time.

The endless fight over the 100-foot flagpole in front of Towbin Hummer's Sahara Avenue auto dealership was heard once again by the City Council on Wednesday.

Owner Dan Towbin has sued to keep his 100-foot pole, a height that the city granted through a zoning variance more than a year ago. But neighbors complained that the snapping sound of the massive 60-foot-long flag is annoying. So they want the flag pole taken down.

The City Council heard arguments and patriotic posturing for the flag, and posturing against it from those who argued the oversized flag has more to do with publicity than patriotism.

Then the council voted that Towbin had to take it down. The main reason, it seems, is that when the city granted the variance, the owner agreed on the record - and this is where Councilwoman Lois Tarkanian earned her Perry Mason badge for producing a recording of that meeting - that he would take it down if it bothered neighbors.

Another sign of our times likely to come: A very unfriendly battle in a courtroom near you.