Las Vegas Strip neighbor opposes massive animated Walgreens sign

By Joe Schoenmann

Thursday, March 3, 2011 | 2:01 a.m.

In this bigger-than-life city now comes the prospect of a gigantic animated sign along the Strip — not for a casino or hotel or nightclub or restaurant or headlining entertainer.

It would be for a drugstore.

And that’s creating a headache for the folks who own the resort next door. They complain that the flashing, pulsating lights on the proposed sign would be too bright even for the Strip.

“If this was somehow going to enhance the Las Vegas Strip, drive tourism or produce a compelling marketing message, that would be fine,” said Jan Jones, Caesars Entertainment senior vice president of communications and government relations. “But it’s none of those things. It’s gaudy for the sake of gaudy.”

How does she really feel? “We hate it.”

The animated sign, which would stretch 322 feet wide by 60 feet high, would adorn the facade of a shopping center being built on a two-acre parcel at Harmon Boulevard and Las Vegas Boulevard South, alongside Planet Hollywood. The anchor tenant: Walgreens.

The county is being asked to approve variances from five zoning guidelines — including the maximum sign size — to allow the sign, and the staff is airing concerns about how its size may distract pedestrians and motorists, and be “excessive and incompatible with adjacent developments.”

How incompatible? Together, the five animated signs that would be affixed to Walgreens would add up to more than 28,000 square feet. By comparison, the Cosmopolitan has 5,360 square feet of video-graphic signs shining down on the Strip, and Planet Hollywood has 6,552 square feet.

A representative of the mall’s developer, BPS Partners, declined to comment.

Debate over the sign is the latest dust-up over how promoters go over the top in trying to capitalize on Strip exposure. More than a year ago, the infamous Strippermobile — the advertising vehicle in which thong-and-bra-clad women pole danced as it moved up and down the Strip — was outlawed for being unsafe. Around the same time, Dinner-in-the-Sky, where daredevil diners are strapped into seats and hoisted several hundred feet into the air for dinner — was denied a spot on the Strip after Wynn Resorts protested and commissioners agreed it wasn’t appropriate adjacent to billion-dollar resorts.

Commission Chairwoman Susan Brager says she’s not ready to lean one way or the other on the Walgreens sign, but Vice Chairman Steve Sisolak seems in favor of it.

“Las Vegas is built on this stuff, the biggest and most unique,” Sisolak said. “If you’re staying on the Strip, you’re going to want to go see that sign.”

The thing is, it’s not likely to keep its largest-on-the-Strip title for long.

When the county Zoning Board approved plans Wednesday for an amusement park across from Mandalay Bay, it also blessed plans for animated signs on both sides of a 500-foot sky wheel — an oversized Ferris wheel with gondolas to carry passengers. Each animated side will be about 49,000 square feet, almost twice as much area as the Walgreens sign.

And there is buzz of another Strip property planning a mega-sign.

Michael Green, College of Southern Nevada history professor, takes the long view.

“What it sounds like is, this is the old Las Vegas approach of being as gaudy and out front as possible,” Green said. “This is either the evolution or devolution of Las Vegas signage.”

But, he added, after the electronic canopy was built over Fremont Street, “it’s no surprise that something similar is coming to the Strip.”

“I guess I have to say bless them. They’re trying to do something in this economy.”