Desert Land LLC and Desert Oasis Investments LLC are building the SkyVue Las Vegas Super Wheel on the south Strip, and Caesars Entertainment is building the High Roller as part of the new LINQ project. But don’t call them Ferris wheels. Caesars is particularly adamant about this. That is why I’m calling them Ferris wheels.
Clark County says the state of Nevada owes it $102.5 million and has sued to get its money. But state government, which took the money from county property taxes and sales taxes to solve its budget crisis, has all the leverage in this fight.
For years, Fremont East was a fun place to drink, especially if you were so committed to drinking (you know who you are) that you didn’t want food to get in the way. Now, however, a restaurant boomlet is coming Downtown. What had been slow and steady progress is quickening, with a pile of new spots opening, in construction or stewing in someone’s imagination.
Off-duty North Las Vegas firefighters walked precincts this week, telling residents to pressure the city to reverse cuts in emergency services. The firefighters can’t rely on their own votes in upcoming elections. Very few of them live in North Las Vegas.
I doubt I’m alone as a journalist in confessing that I’ve often read the blockbuster news in the newspaper and what was pertinent to my beat, but I let many other stories slide.
After watching the Las Vegas Philharmonic blow the doors off the Smith Center recently, my date and I wanted to have dinner downtown. We stood outside, looking toward the Golden Nugget, and pondered how we’d get there.
It’s Monday morning at Canyon Springs High School in North Las Vegas, the start of summer football practice. At 6 a.m. sharp, Coach Hunkie Cooper tells an assistant to close the gate, because responsible men are prompt. “We took over this program three years ago. Had been 1-30. Last year, we won the division title, beat Vegas in the playoffs. But the most important numbers are our GPAs, our SATs.”
As a journalist, my job is to be skeptical, and given the incessant flimflammery in Las Vegas, I think I was entitled to be extra wary of the Tony Hsieh-Zappos-downtown craze. My outlook is deeply influenced by the “Simpsons” episode when the charismatic charlatan Lyle Lanley sells Springfield a rickety monorail (sound familiar?), so I always try to question what’s in that delicious Kool-Aid. For years I’ve been reading glowing profiles of Hsieh, the prodigy founder of an Internet company he sold to Microsoft for millions before becoming CEO of online retailer Zappos.
Every upstanding law firm needs framed diplomas from the finest law schools, crystal decanters for single malt scotch and a nice solid oak conference table. And in Nevada, it seems, they require one other amenity: Their very own legislator.
Nancy Menzel, a professor of nursing at UNLV, is leaving the Southern Nevada District Board of Health in frustration after just one term. Menzel describes a dysfunctional board burdened by conflict with Clark County while public health problems fester. Menzel is supportive of the district but was scathing in her critique of its board.
Until they can score a fake ID, there’s not much for kids to do in this town. Las Vegas is like most American communities that way, but gambling and alcohol are central to life here, making the problem even worse.
Sometimes it’s hard not to feel like we live in a ridiculous town. In the latest example, Clark County has put the squeeze on a Montessori school — a Montessori school! — to appease unhappy neighbors, so the school has decided to pack up and leave.
While development remains fairly moribund in the rest of the Las Vegas Valley, there’s suddenly a diverse array of projects in various states of planning and completion downtown.
