LOOKING IN ON: CITY HALL

Sunday, July 29, 2007 | 7:03 a.m.

Many Las Vegans feel there is "something" about Oscar, but the city's mayor might have met his match when the star of "There's Something About Mary" visited him last week to talk global warming.

Actress Cameron Diaz, the instigator of a near-international incident when visiting Peru in June, visited the mayor Tuesday.

Diaz, 34, the voice of Princess Fiona in "Shrek 3" and who will star in a 2008 movie, "What Happens in Vegas ..." about two people who get married after a night of drunken tomfoolery in Las Vegas, has taken to heart fears about global warming.

She drives a hybrid car, wrote a forward to "The Green Book: The Everyday Guide to Saving the Planet One Simple Step at a Time," and helped promote the July 7 24-hour concert Live Earth, meant to focus attention on global warming.

Oscar Goodman's contribution to staving off the meltdown of our polar caps, according to his staff, comes in several forms. The city began operating a hydrogen fuel station, the first in the world, in 2002. Hydrogen-fueled vehicles create an exhaust that is cleaner than that of cars burning hydro carbons (gasoline). In addition, 90 percent of city-owned vehicles run on alternative fuels such as hydrogen, natural gas, bio-diesel and reformulated gas.

And, Goodman has been asked to talk about global warming in England this fall.

As for his meeting with Diaz, which was off limits to the press, he said it went "great."

And there apparently were no incidents, such as the one in Peru when Diaz carried a bag emblazoned with a red star and the words, in Chinese, "Serve the People." It caused an uproar, for which Diaz apologized, because about 70,000 people died during an insurgency of the Maoist group The Shining Path in the 1980s and early 1990s.

Too bad Diaz couldn't have held off her visit a few days. She might have been able to put some meat on her frame had she been around last Thursday, Goodman's 68th birthday.

As he went through his usual breakneck schedule of meetings, the mayor, who is trying to burn some fat through the high-protein Atkins Diet, was forced to taste but mostly turn away pounds of carbohydrates in the birthday cakes offered wherever he went.

Some of the first property-for-money deals are about to happen in the 85-acre, multi-block area downtown that a group called REI Neon wants to turn into an arena/condo/retail development.

As of July 31, owners of a group of properties on Commerce Street, including the building that houses the art gallery of Todd VonBastiaans, will close on deals with REI Neon.

A phone call and e-mail messages to REI Neon representatives went unanswered. But VonBastiaans and others in the area said property owners - 120 throughout the project area - are being offered as much as four times their property's value. In principle, all 120 have agreed to sell.

REI Neon's "Project Pulse" is envisioned as including a 22,000-seat basketball or hockey arena, 6,000 hotel rooms, one or more casinos and space for retail, conferences and exhibitions. And although the developers two weeks ago said the project would cost $9.5 billion, Goodman said Friday the price tag is now $10.5 billion.