Ask just about anyone what any city needs to be taken seriously, and sooner or later, a Big Important Downtown Performing Arts Center comes up. Leaving aside the begging-to-be-begged question of who decides whether a city deserves to be taken seriously, the above notion is so automatic, such a knee-jerk reaction, that it bears closer examination.
What is it about the model of some German town in the High Middle Ages that we still cling to today? Why do we need to have a central square—even a conceptual square—with all the Big Important Buildings clustered around? And in a city like Las Vegas that has always incorporated automotive transportation, whether for inhabitants or visitors, why do we feel such a strong desire to have a "walkable" city, a "pedestrian-friendly environment" or a ... well, just insert your favorite pseudo-academic buzz phrase here to describe someplace that requires you to hoof it from one spot to another.
Simply put: We shouldn't.
The whole concept of a Downtown performing arts center, some massive complex housing venues for ballet, opera, classical music, theater and, heaven help us, interpretive dance, is archaic. We no longer build moats and walls around our cities, why should we, in an age of easy transportation, centralize our high arts? Or any arts, for that matter?
Far more sensible is the concept of satellite centers. Much as more modern colleges have realized, it makes more sense to go to the students than to force the students to amass on one big campus. Las Vegas needs to take the same view of its arts. Put an opera house in Summerlin. Put a fine-art museum on Nellis. Why not a ballet theater in Henderson? Let's face it, no one but a handful walk from their homes to the Las Vegas Art Museum. Even fewer will walk from their Fremont Street apartments to partake of the ballet. And no one is going to push a stroller from the Holsum Lofts across Charleston and down Las Vegas Boulevard to visit the Leid Discovery Children's Museum.
As for those folks from San Francisco or New York who say Las Vegas can't be taken seriously as a city, there's a simple answer. Hand them back their blackjack chips and tell them to go back home.