Editorial: Shed light on Neonopolis

Monday, Sept. 10, 2007 | 7:01 a.m.

Las Vegas officials and representatives of downtown casinos were in ebullient moods 10 years ago when an Atlanta developer sought permission to build a shopping and entertainment center downtown.

It was to be called Neonopolis@Fremont Street. It was to be downtown's equivalent of the Strip's Fashion Show mall and the Forum Shops at Caesars. It would boost gaming revenue by attracting well-heeled shoppers who would pop into downtown casinos for some slot play and table games.

Gaming analysts were not sold on the project, but their notes of caution played to deaf ears on the City Council and in boardrooms of downtown casinos. Councilman Gary Reese summed up the prevailing optimism after the city's approval of the project in January 1998.

"This will go down in the city's annals as one of the greatest things ever to happen to Las Vegas," he told the Las Vegas Sun .

Well, at least the first part of his prediction turned out to be accurate. Neonopolis (the @Fremont Street never took hold) has indeed gone down in the city's annals - way down. The $100 million project, once envisioned to be overflowing with upscale shops and restaurants anchored by a 24-theater movie complex, has been a dud from the outset.

No more than a handful of shops and offices have ever leased space at Neonopolis - an eventuality so unexpected in the late 1990s that the city partnered with the developer and spent millions building a subterranean parking garage.

The city was to recoup its investment through customer parking fees paid by the project's tenants. But with so few tenants and customers, the city's investment has gone sour.

Ebulliency turned to frustration long ago. And it got worse at last week's City Council meeting when Mayor Oscar Goodman got word once again from a bill collector that a man representing a current owner of Neonopolis has defaulted on hundreds of thousands of dollars owed to several of his clients stemming from various business deals.

That prompted Goodman to order city staff "to find out who we are doing business with." It turns out that the city is no longer sure whether it even knows all of its partners in the Neonopolis project.

In our view the city needs to do much more than just learn the names and affiliations of all Neonopolis owners. It needs to commission a top-to-bottom study of Neonopolis, one that would pinpoint where the city went wrong and recommend ways of turning this project around.