It’s Lights, Action, Excess in Las Vegas

In a city built in part on people’s visceral reaction to 24 hours a day of bright lights, it was a most amazing sight when downtown’s Glitter Gulch went dark for a moment.

That was nothing compared to the spectacle that followed: a light and sound extravaganza that erupted across a 90-foot-high electric signboard arching above four blocks of Fremont Street.

Throngs of gamblers and spectators stood in awe Thursday night as 2.1 million lights illuminated the once-gritty downtown street and enveloped the audience with music and the thunderous sound of a buffalo stampede, accompanied by colorful animation and graphics.

Las Vegas, which long ago abandoned any sense of scale and sublimity, has done it again.

The place that has given us a volcano, a pyramid, pirates and faux Roman warriors continues to redefine excess, this time with the world’s largest computer-driven light show. It comes from one of Los Angeles’ leading urban architects, an expert at turning the old and tired into new and fresh.

“This is the damnedest project I ever did,” said Venice-based Jon Jerde, whose previous projects include Universal CityWalk, San Diego’s Horton Plaza, Minnesota’s Mall of America--the largest in the nation--and who has now transformed Fremont Street into Las Vegas’ newest must-see.

With Binion’s Horseshoe Casino and the Golden Nugget hotel as a backdrop, thousands of people, many in town for a rodeo championship, sang “Happy Trails to You” and street-danced to “I got spurs that jingle jangle jingle” at the unveiling of the $70-million Fremont Street Experience. When the seven-minute show was over, the crowd applauded and some even raised their arms toward the overhead light canopy as if paying homage to a rock star.

“This gives me the same feeling as the Mardi Gras in New Orleans,” said Floyd Broussard, vacationing here from Washington. “This has enough excitement to compete with the Strip.”

That is exactly what downtown casino owners hoped to hear.

With tourists’ attention in Las Vegas having turned solidly toward the glitzier, newer Strip and its ostentatious mega-resorts, the downtown moguls chose to let Jerde design their future with a dramatic make-over of Fremont Street.

“Glitter Gulch,” long a struggling district where gamblers came face to face with panderers and vagrants, has been transformed into a traffic-free pedestrian mall where gamblers stroll beneath an audacious rigging hung over the street.

By day the latticework provides a 50% sun break, but at night it explodes in enough animated graphics, music and colored lights to leave gamblers gaping. Jerde’s marching orders were to be dramatic and return some sense of sophistication to the aging downtown district.

“Most city centers have lost their vitality and given way to the suburbs, where the new kids in town were building the regional shopping centers, the drive-through banks, the fast-food stands,” Jerde said. “Las Vegas’ downtown went the way of all downtowns.”

Unable to compete with the Strip’s brash outrageousness, the downtown casinos in recent decades have had to content themselves with a generally less-affluent clientele drawn by cheaper prices and more generous slot machines. One downtown standard, the Pioneer Club Casino with its landmark neon cowboy, closed this past year, and others are on the sales block.

Jerde pitched the canopied pedestrian mall, free of vehicles, where the casinos would essentially share a common exterior lobby and offer something to gamblers that the crowded and roomy Strip could not: the ability to easily walk from one casino to another.

The first challenge, though, was to get the downtown casino owners to agree on something.

“Together, we’re the biggest gambling house in the world,” said longtime downtown fixture Jack Binion. “But it’s a natural phenomenon among casino executives to not work together. As a group, we are self-serving and competitive. But there was an overpowering urgency and need to work together for this.”

To pay for it, the downtown casinos kicked in $25 million, with some of them quietly paying more than their share to cover those that couldn’t. The city of Las Vegas--which benefits from downtown’s gambling revenue because the more lucrative Strip is outside the city limits--contributed $22.4 million in redevelopment funds. The downtown room tax was increased to help recover more of the cost.

Jerde was recruited by casino mogul Steve Wynn--whose Mirage Resorts owns the flagship casino and Treasure Island on the Strip and the Golden Nugget downtown--after an architectural competition fell flat.

Wynn’s own suggestion, that Fremont Street be turned into a canal, went no further than the other ideas, including turning the street scene into a faux crashed spaceship.

Jerde argued that the theme that made Glitter Gulch famous--its lights--should be exploited, and Fremont Street turned into a stage for urban theater where gamblers might break out into song and dance as they did Thursday night.

The challenge was to create a light show that would smoothly articulate across a span 1,400 feet long and 125 feet across, all the while accompanied by a soundtrack that stayed in sync with the movement of the lighted animations.

Contractors, ranging from the world’s largest sign company to a Hollywood producer of MTV music award shows, were brought in.

“It was a huge technical nightmare,” said Adrienne Gabriel, a project manager for Railton & Associates in Hollywood. “This medium that we’re playing with is a beast that nobody has used before. Producing the graphics was one challenge, then we had to transfer the data to the computers that run the system on Fremont Street to make sure every light bulb lights up.”

In addition to financial help, the city passed ordinances to redefine the area as an exclusive, quasi-private commercial venue.

“These ordinances push the edge of the [constitutional] envelope the furthest, and we offered to meet with the ACLU but they were strangely quiet,” said Kathilynn Carpenter, spokeswoman for the Fremont Street Experience.

For its part, City Hall says the renovation is stoking renewed interest in downtown. Sparked by the Fremont Street investment, plans are in discussion for a $1-billion, 84,000-seat domed stadium, a $1-billion performing arts center and other private investments and retail stores on nearby downtown blocks.

“Five years ago, we couldn’t find anyone to invest a dollar in downtown Las Vegas,” said Mayor Jan Laverty Jones, “because it was a dying, seedy, old area.”

Even the casinos are now reinvesting in themselves, Wynn said. “The difference in the attitude of the downtown casino owners is like night and day,” he said.

Not everyone is convinced that the gimmick will pull Fremont Street out of its stagnancy. “People tell us the main reason they don’t visit downtown is that they don’t have the time to,” said University of Nevada Las Vegas marketing professor Lawrence Dandurand.

“You can easily spend all your time in Vegas on the Strip--or even inside one mega-resort. The competition is overwhelming and Fremont Street might just become one more attraction to throw in the competitive mix.”

But Fremont Street Experience organizers say that to compete with the Strip’s attractions, the light show themes will regularly change and grow more sophisticated as their imagination catches up to the technology.