Las Vegas Review-Journal (Sunday)
FUTURE OF LAS VEGAS
WHAT WILL THE CITY LOOK LIKE IN 5 AND 10 YEARS FROM NOW?
The night it took six traffic-light changes for me to cross the Strip on Harmon from the east to the west was when I first began to wonder about the future of traffic congestion in Las Vegas. A month later, the night I spent one hour on Frank Sinatra Drive along with 2,500 other motorists trying to get into the Monte Carlo parking garage as 20,000 basketball fans were leaving nearby T-Mobile Arena, I conjectured that we had finally arrived at unsolvable gridlock.
It got me thinking that it’s not going to get any better. It will get worse. What are our city planners doing about it? Has the time come for Clark County Commissioners to partner with Mayor Carolyn Goodman and her City of Las Vegas Council to lay out a joint plan for the valley as we close in on 2020 and a new decade?
When I turned to architect Leonard Bergman and asked him to peer into his crystal ball for what the future will hold, I was surprised to hear that eventually the Strip will be banned to vehicular traffic and become a pedestrian mall with an elevated monorail built above it.
Leonard and his brother, George Bergman, are sons of late founder Joel Bergman of Bergman Walls & Associates, and having helped shape the Strip with designs for The Mirage, T.I. and Paris Las Vegas, they have the credentials that make the future look real and not just an idle dream. They know of what they speak.
BWA is a world-renowned architectural and design firm specializing in hospitality, dining, retail and entertainment. As a leading name in hospitality architecture and design, BWA has just added four team members — Frederick Robertus, Ben Yi Xum, Heather Chapa and Jisoo Kim — giving them more than 150 years of combined experience in worldwide projects. Their commitment is to improve the environment through the practice of sustainable design.
In 2015 the partners opened Jewel Nightclub at Aria and Montecristo Cigar Bar at Caesars Palace and completed Julius Tower at Caesars. They are about to start construction on Palace Tower improvements at Caesars and have continuing work at Paris and Planet Hollywood.
Leonard reminded me that our valley is 600 square miles, with 133 square miles in between I-15 and 95, and is home to more than 2 million of our state’s 2.7 million residents. We have award-winning master-planned communities on the perimeter and gentrified historic neighborhoods and business districts near a newly revitalized Downtown.
But we are bursting at the seams. The Downtown Centennial Plan is an initiative that defines the area and provides rules and regulations for development in the Downtown Corridor. It’s a revealing document. “A fully coordinated effort with Clark County would create a unified vision for the future,” said Leonard. But will that ever happen? Read on in our illuminating Q+A.
Leonard, first let’s define what is the Strip. What did the Strip become? What do you think it will be?
It started out just for gambling. It became the greatest entertainment venue in the world and it continues to grow, and I think that it will continue to move past gaming and into every form of entertainment whether that be old-line entertainers, new rockers and inventive entertainment that hasn’t even occurred yet — all to be driven by technology.
Our hotels aren’t just ordinary accommodations. They are entertainment attractions. We are unique in everything we do. We move fast. We evolved faster than any place that I have ever been. There is no city in the world like Las Vegas.
Does it amaze you even as a man who creates the nonstop evolution?
All the time. Just to cut back a little bit to the historical, I was privileged to work under my father, and he was always amazed, too. He mentored all of us at BWA to keep up with what’s going on, to invent, to think, to create new ideas, and we continue to pursue that. I will, too. It’s my turn, since my father’s gone, to mentor all the folks who work for us now in the same way.
Does that spirit go back to early western gunslinger days and why nobody here ever says no? I’m trying to get a sense from you as to where the spirit, the speed of construction, the extraordinary do-anything attitude originates.
I call it “can do” and “never say no.” It started long before I was born, and I’m 60 years old. It’s always been that way. I think that when the first major casino resort was created, which was The Mirage, it was like it was on steroids. It’s never stopped. It was that community spirit here as they competed with each other.
First one resort, then another resort, then we had that round of them starting in 1989. The attitude was, “We can do that, but we can do it faster and do it better.” Caesars was reinvented, and it looked nothing like Jay Sarno commissioned to be built when it started, yet the solid bones are still there inside.
I think we’re on the edge of another big-build boom. It’s going to happen on the north end of the Strip. People are optimistic. We have unfinished properties, and what we’re seeing in our country tells me that it’s going to take off. I’m optimistic about the north end, and it will complement the south end.
When the Fontainebleau site is completed and Resort World is built, which is — I’ve seen the renderings — really quite magnificent, those two projects will drive the whole north end to its completion along with the expansion of the convention center. When that’s built, it’s going to make that end of the Strip unbelievably valuable.
The proximity to get there is going to be so easy with those completed resorts with the Fontainebleau right across the street from the former Riviera and catty-corner of Resort World. And who knows what’s going to happen on the old Frontier site? That one’s a little bit up in the air, but I still believe that there are movers and shakers out there who will make it happen. I’m very bullish on Las Vegas. We’ll never run out of ideas.
In my mind, architects aren’t the first visionaries. They execute in the sense of technical and mechanical design what the visionary wants. Does it take a person like Steve Wynn who throws all caution to the wind and says, “I will do this”? Then the whole world says, “You’re crazy to make Las Vegas expand more than the way it’s expanded.”
It does take an operating visionary. That’s the history of our town and its players: Jay Sarno to Steve Wynn to Sheldon Adelson.
I used the word gunslingers. What would you use?
They are pioneering visionaries.
You’ve got a number of Strip projects at the moment, and you start more construction this year. We’ve seen miniature versions of capital cities land on the Strip: New York-New York, Venice, Paris, the pyramids of Egypt and a Roman Empire. Have we finished doing overseas themed hotels? Is luxury like Sheldon has at The Palazzo and Steve at the Wynn the keyword of the mission today? What is the future?
It is the keyword. It is, and all of what they’ve done there, which is more recent, it is highly influenced by the past. No doubt contemporary interpretations of classical architectural design is the trend. It’s what’s already been done and turning it into something new or exciting and better. Something that’s really going to appeal to Millennials, yet still attract people who really have the money to spend and are substantial ...
... eventually the Strip will be banned to vehicular traffic and become a pedestrian mall with an elevated monorail built above it.