Editorial: Remaking UNLV’s face

Tuesday, Jan. 30, 2007 | 7:16 a.m.

University officials have plans to transform Maryland Parkway into what they are calling "Midtown UNLV," an area that would add an immense intangible to the school - a real college atmosphere.

The plans would create an open place for people to walk, an area filled with restaurants, galleries and shops - a place that would add a much-needed sense of community to the university.

The face-lift is an important part of UNLV's effort to remake itself, especially as it tries to recruit talented students and faculty members. Imagine a recruiting trip to UNLV: Anyone driving down Maryland Parkway, to what should be the face of the campus, won't be focused on the university, but a row of strip malls and fast-food places - nothing like a discussion about Dante over a little Mickey D's.

In 2004 Carol Harter, then the president of UNLV, proposed the project, and now university officials are hoping to take a big step by moving ahead with a $600,000 pilot project to narrow part of Maryland Parkway from six traffic lanes to four. They hope that by reducing traffic and widening sidewalks in the area, people will be enticed to walk along Maryland Parkway.

On Feb. 6 the university will ask the Clark County Commission to approve the plan, and we hope the commission does so.

Michael Saltman is a university donor and trustee of the UNLV Foundation. He is also owner of a worn three-story mall across from UNLV called The Promenade and a strong supporter of the "Midtown UNLV" plan.

"I've been to universities around the world," Saltman said in a Las Vegas Sun story Sunday by Joe Schoenmann. "They mellow and balance communities, they create a rise in the creative class, they make us a higher and better people.

"And overall, not just at UNLV. I think its time has come to be a larger part of the social fabric of this city."

We couldn't agree more.