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Joe Schoenmann

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  • Joe Downtown

    Monday, May 13, 2013

    Silver State Production Services wants people with stories and memories of the Huntridge Theater to tell them for the camera Wednesday night.

  • Food

    Friday, May 10, 2013

    A soon-to-open Italian sub joint, along with Mingo, a new bar/restaurant further near Casino Center Drive and Charleston Boulevard, might just give some of the new Fremont East bar/restaurants a run for their money.

  • Film

    Friday, May 10, 2013

    Freeman White III has come a long way since his first film, a documentary about buffalo grass. Next week, he’s bringing “Five Thirteen,”a film five years in the making, to Cannes for the international film festival to show to potential buyers and distributors.

  • Food

    Thursday, May 9, 2013

    There may be nothing more “Vegas” than the shrimp cocktail. Well, that is after gambling, neon signage, diminishing water resources and the mistaken belief that prostitution is legal here.

  • Joe Downtown

    Wednesday, May 8, 2013

    Computer chips easily outnumber cowboys in Downtown Las Vegas, especially as startup founders and coders find sanctuary around East Fremont Street, soon to be the backyard of dot-com retailer Zappos. But Zappos aside, Las Vegas’ persona remains firmly grounded in the Wild West myth, and downtown’s Helldorado Days, a multiday celebration of the the West’s rugged reputation, fits right in.

  • Joe Downtown

    Wednesday, May 8, 2013

    Las Vegas Strip casinos aren't there for locals, but more and more, Downtown development is.

  • Joe Downtown

    Wednesday, May 8, 2013

    Project 100, the ambitious multimodal transportation system beginning in downtown Las Vegas, is seeking several people to fill a variety of new jobs.

  • Joe Downtown

    Tuesday, May 7, 2013

    The Gold Spike reopened this week with a surprising addition: slot machines. Technicians on Tuesday morning wheeled some 10 or more machines out of a truck and onto the floor of the business, which closed April 21, less than a month ago after being purchased from Siegel Group Nevada Inc. by Downtown Project investors. After the sale was completed, Tony Hsieh, Zappos CEO and one of the Downtown Project partners, said it would not reopen as a casino.

  • Joe Downtown

    Tuesday, May 7, 2013

    One of Downtown Las Vegas’ oldest residents, the El Cortez, will be honored for winning a listing on the National Register of Historic Places. Mayor Carolyn Goodman and Councilman Bob Coffin will headline a ceremony at 4 p.m. Thursday to unveil a commemorative plaque at the hotel/casino. The city's oldest hotel to continuously operate under the same name, the El Cortez became only the second Las Vegas casino on the nation's cultural preservation list in February.

  • Joe Downtown

    Friday, May 3, 2013

    Less than a month after it closed, the Gold Spike will reopen Monday as a bar and restaurant with a large area once devoted to slot machines now home to games such as pool, darts, Golden Tee video golf and shuffleboard.

  • Joe Downtown

    Wednesday, May 1, 2013

    The festival's video will air in early June.

  • Joe Downtown

    Friday, April 26, 2013

    With many of its former employees returning, the Gold Spike casino/hotel will reopen within the next two weeks as a restaurant/bar. As expected, the business will open without a casino. And for the time being, hotel operations are shut down.

  • Joe Downtown

    Thursday, April 25, 2013

    A Las Vegas councilman wants to change a city code that forces developers to spend thousands to retrofit older buildings with energy-saving measures such as window glazing and insulation on cinder-block walls.

  • Joe Downtown

    Thursday, April 25, 2013

    The skeleton went up a few weeks ago. Now the fabric dome is in place. Slowly, the Downtown Container Park – which is more of a prefabricated cube-park since the original idea of using shipping containers has been mostly abandoned – is coming together.

  • Music

    Thursday, April 25, 2013

    Vanessa Andrea has been writing and performing songs since she was 12. Her first was an expression of acceptance for her father, then serving time in the California prison system. “Songs have been my key to surviving,” says Andrea, who at 23 sings with the voice of someone much older. She said she has worked since she was 14 to support her family. “It’s gotten me through life, saved my life, really. Dad in prison, mom addicted to drugs. Writing songs helped me get away and communicate what I felt.”

  • Joe Downtown

    Wednesday, April 24, 2013

    Let's just say the area has seen more than a food truck battle.

  • Joe Downtown

    Wednesday, April 24, 2013

    A local production company today begins filming the antics, thoughts and lives of a handful of downtown residents for an Internet series that shines light on the people behind the area’s transformation from the forsaken to the embraced.

  • Joe Downtown

    Wednesday, April 24, 2013

    A Spokane, Wash., e-commerce site has bought the inventory and name of ecomom.com, a Las Vegas-based online company dissolved shortly after co-founder Jody Sherman committed suicide in January.

  • Food

    Tuesday, April 23, 2013

    The monkey skeleton sign at La Comida, the new Mexican restaurant downtown, isn’t there simply because it’s unique, fun and destined in some distant future to end up in the Neon Museum. A monkey-Mexican connection exists: Mayans, who lived in Mexico, considered monkeys divine creatures. But even Michael Morton, who is opening the restaurant at Sixth and Fremont streets, acknowledges that beyond its historical take, the sign, conceived by his wife, “is a lot of fun.”

  • Joe Downtown

    Tuesday, April 23, 2013

    Fremont Street businesses will offer discounted food and drinks Monday night to draw people for the filming of a promotional ad for the upcoming Life Is Beautiful music, food and art festival.

  • Joe Downtown

    Thursday, April 18, 2013

    Hoping to add to downtown’s tech startup ecosystem, Jon Sterling wants to buy a house downtown for startup founders as they transition into Las Vegas. To do that, the 34-year-old startup founder and former real estate businessman is doing something he’s never seen: He’s giving himself a month to raise $125,000 in small donations, branding opportunities and other means.

  • Joe Downtown

    Thursday, April 18, 2013

    Las Vegan Michael Bunin has done pretty well as a comedic actor. He’s been in national television ad campaigns, been a regular on a television series, and earlier this month he was in the season premiere of “Mad Men.” But nothing in the Chaparral High School graduate’s career so far is likely to top a 35-second advertisement that first aired a week ago on YouTube and has gone viral with nearly 12 million views so far. It’s an ad for Kmart’s policy of shipping items customers can’t find in the store to their homes for free. It begins with 10 words from a disbelieving Bunin to a Kmart employee: "Ship my pants, right here? Ship my pants, you're kidding."

  • Joe Downtown

    Wednesday, April 17, 2013

    Turning casinos into community? The guy must hate Las Vegas.

  • Food

    Wednesday, April 17, 2013

    After spending spring break here, University of Iowa students in a class that focuses only on downtown Las Vegas have come up with something they believe will enhance the area. The upper-level students who spent spring break here and downtown as part of their classwork are going to introduce a vegan food truck to the downtown landscape.

  • Joe Downtown

    Wednesday, April 17, 2013

    It comes as little surprise that about a day after a 40-foot observation tower was erected on the site of the Downtown Container Park at Seventh and Fremont streets, graffiti was found on it.

  • Cirque du Soleil

    Wednesday, April 17, 2013

    Cirque du Soleil has a virtual lock on the Las Vegas Strip performance industry with seven – and soon to be eight – shows, including the upcoming Michael Jackson tribute “One.” But now you can even find the entertainment giant’s employees working downtown. They’re not performing. They’re sewing.

  • Joe Downtown

    Tuesday, April 16, 2013

    A few more pieces have been added to the Downtown Container Park, a project developers hope to have in place this fall. Situated at Seventh and Fremont streets, the Container Park – which has been redesigned to include more prefabricated cubes than shipping containers – will take up a half block and include enough spaces to accommodate 20 to 30 businesses. Monday afternoon, a 40-foot tower containing a spiral staircase was hoisted into place with a massive crane. The tower walls will be adorned with large-lettered signage, with a light feature affixed to the peak; inside will be a private observation room.

  • Joe Downtown

    Tuesday, April 16, 2013

    Nearly 50 former employees of the Gold Spike casino/hotel seeking jobs after the property's sale and closure showed for interviews with five different businesses or agencies Tuesday morning.

  • Joe Downtown

    Friday, April 12, 2013

    Some 43 residents of the John E Carson Hotel, purchased by Downtown Project investors to be transformed into a multistore retail, food and beverage facility, will get free rent for a month and be moved into a different hotel at the investors’ expense.

  • Joe Downtown

    Thursday, April 11, 2013

    The Gold Spike hotel/casino will reopen again but its casino days are over. It might not even be named the Gold Spike. The Siegel Group Nevada announced Thursday the sale of the property to Downtown Project investors, who already held the note to the property. Terms were not disclosed.

  • Joe Downtown

    Thursday, April 11, 2013

    Complaints about cab drivers refusing to give people rides for relatively short distances are fairly commonplace downtown. Just try getting a cabbie to drive you from Fremont Street at Las Vegas Boulevard to Soho Lofts at Charleston and Las Vegas boulevards.

  • Joe Downtown

    Wednesday, April 10, 2013

    Screwy immigration regulations are weighing down British app developer Bluefields.

  • Music

    Tuesday, April 9, 2013

    A colorful phoenix spray-painted onto the back wall of the defunct and decaying Huntridge Theater has led to a welcomed slowing of northbound traffic on Maryland Parkway the past few days.

  • Joe Downtown

    Monday, April 8, 2013

    A group purchasing property all over downtown is close to finalizing a deal for the 360-unit Mayan Plaza apartment building on Alta Drive, next to the new Metro Police headquarters.

  • Museums

    Friday, April 5, 2013

    Downtown Las Vegas’ popular neon sign graveyard, The Neon Museum, is extending weekend hours to meet demand. Tours will now be offered Sundays, every half hour, beginning at 10 a.m.

  • Joe Downtown

    Thursday, April 4, 2013

    The skeleton of the geodesic dome that will be able to project an array of images on its interior walls with state-of-the-art digital equipment is finally going up in the Downtown Container Park at Seventh and Fremont streets.

  • Joe Downtown

    Wednesday, April 3, 2013

    A once-empty lot at Eighth and Fremont streets, adjacent to the coming downtown Container Park, is now full of more than a dozen large trailers. Not trailer homes though a rumor, however unlikely, was floating a month ago that the Downtown Project was looking to trailers as a way to fill a residential need as it prepares to move some 1,300 Zappos employees downtown this fall.

  • Joe Downtown

    Wednesday, April 3, 2013

    The Bunkhouse was purchased by the Downtown Project in January.

  • Joe Downtown

    Wednesday, April 3, 2013

    The two-day downtown Life Is Beautiful festival – a celebration of music and food – is scheduled for Saturday and Sunday, Oct. 26 and 27, and organizers have begun to put together some mini-events leading up to the fall festival on Fremont Street.

  • Joe Downtown

    Wednesday, April 3, 2013

    A couple from Ames, Iowa, will be the first to exchange wedding vows in a Denny’s when they get married Wednesday at the national chain’s restaurant on Fremont Street.

  • Joe Downtown

    Tuesday, April 2, 2013

    A futuristic mural in the mayor’s office of old City Hall used to depict a "Jetsons"-esque city with flying cars zipping down Fremont Street.

  • Joe Downtown

    Monday, April 1, 2013

    First came Venture for America’s college graduates, several of whom were hired by Downtown Project for two-year stints to study, learn and help startup businesses. Then a few weeks ago, 14 students from the University of Iowa in a class devoted to "reimagining" downtown Las Vegas spent their spring break here and will return this summer. Now students from Cambridge University – yes, that Cambridge, the second-oldest university in the English speaking world – are getting in on the act.

  • Joe Downtown

    Monday, April 1, 2013

    A downtown salon’s desire to hire eight stylists by the end of the year is being fueled by a resurging economy and the influx of workers to the area. Staci Linklater and James Reza, owners of Globe Salon, 900 Las Vegas Blvd. South, will stage auditions for new stylists from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Monday, with the goal of hiring on new people to meet the salon's growing demand, they said.

  • Joe Downtown

    Monday, April 1, 2013

    One more sign that the Fremont East Entertainment District is starting to come of age: Those superhero and other characters that populate the Fremont Street Experience were seen last weekend near Fremont and Sixth streets.

  • Joe Downtown

    Thursday, March 28, 2013

    “Community” is word coming into vogue in downtown Las Vegas due to efforts of Downtown Project to create and strengthen community in an area where virtually none previously existed, along the eastern stretches of East Fremont Street. Late Friday afternoon, a man who worked nine years at Google and its subsidiary, YouTube, will talk about how the world is not only smaller because of Internet video sharing, it’s creating more awareness and forcing a redefinition of “community.”

  • Joe Downtown

    Thursday, March 28, 2013

    It isn’t illegal to have open containers downtown, notes Officer Charles Stuart, who will talk about the issue to local media Friday. But it is illegal, he said, if the alcohol is not purchased from a downtown establishment.

  • Joe Downtown

    Thursday, March 28, 2013

    The purchase of downtown — well, a good bunch of it, anyway — is almost complete. Downtown Project insiders call the mass of land stretching over several blocks from Las Vegas Boulevard to Maryland Parkway “the llama,” because that’s what it sort of resembles from space.

  • Joe Downtown

    Wednesday, March 27, 2013

    A Metro Police sergeant who has become a familiar face downtown will retire Monday then go to work overseeing the new Downtown Rangers program.

  • Joe Downtown

    Wednesday, March 27, 2013

    It was stunning to watch a local creative look over both shoulders before talking to me about what’s going on Downtown. “I don’t think they really want to hear anything negative,” he said, sitting at the bar of the Beat coffeehouse.

  • Joe Downtown

    Wednesday, March 27, 2013

    A local fourth-grade artist and an Irish folk music legend are teaming up Easter Sunday for an art show and concert to benefit Casa de Luz, which serves the poor in downtown’s Naked City.