Oscar Goodman's got some action.
"I'll make a bet," the mayor says. "A year and a half from now, when people come to Las Vegas and ask, 'Where's the action?,' they'll say, 'Downtown Las Vegas.'
"I'll take all comers."
This might represent more than the mayor's usual chipper attitude about his number one priority, Downtown redevelopment. Several portents have aligned to make his wager a decent risk. Downtown Las Vegas could be the next young-adult hangout.
True, it takes some imagination to see the city's center as a young person's ideal destination. The lights are hardly brighter there, and you can't forget all its troubles, ignore all its cares. Its only clubs are for local slot punchers, who thread through gaggles of low-market tourists gawking at the Fremont Street Experience canopy. To go Downtown is to slum for authenticity in casinos whose carpets once had patterns.
The long-awaited renaissance of Downtown, complete with loft apartments above trendy shops, hot clubs and a thriving arts district, might arrive in time for Generation Z. But new players on the scene already aim to lure X and Y from the Strip.
Contrary to general assumptions, the Golden Nugget's new owners, The Casino stars Tim Poster and Tom Breitling, are not going head-to-head with the Palms and the Hard Rock Hotel for twentysomethings. Both 35, they seek fellow Gen-Xer's.
"They respect the tradition and history of the Golden Nugget and Downtown Las Vegas," says Dan Shumny, vice president of marketing, and the new owners have no desire to displace the casino's current customer base. "What they're trying to do is to create some activity, some entertainment [to appeal] to a younger crowd." Shumny points to this weekend's appearance of Aaron Lewis from Staind in a solo acoustic show that the Golden Nugget has marketed to a demographic slightly older than headbangers and clubbers.
Once people get out of their 20s, says Shumny, they have more leisure, more disposable income and are "probably more profitable for us as a business target." Besides, he notes, the Nugget doesn't have a nightclub or lounge of the sort that lures twentysomethings to Strip casinos.
Meanwhile, though, Barrick Gaming, new owners of the Plaza, Las Vegas Club, the Gold Spike and the Western, has set its sights on those Y's. Stephen Crystal, Barrick's 38-year-old president, says he's in daily contact with club operators from Chicago, New York and California who are interested in developing clubs and bars in Downtown Las Vegas.
"They can offer a street-level authentic experience from the standpoint of the clubs and the bars that you can't offer when you put it on the third floor of a casino," says Crystal, whose company has also acquired a number of properties on or near Fremont Street. "By the time there's the first project, all of a sudden there's going to be the third, fourth and fifth," he adds.
Barrick sees itself pulling in a younger demographic as a by-product of Downtown redevelopment, in which it plans to emerge as a force. "We very much are focused on not only Downtown as a tourist destination or as a recreational place for locals, but as a true urban center, where people live, work and play," Crystal says. "It's not new that young people are driven by places [where they] can have all of that at their fingertips."
The linchpin could be the Plaza. As Crystal notes, the Related Company of New York is building the World Furniture Market nearby, a facility of nearly 6 million square feet, eventually, that seeks to become a national center of furniture and design. Crystal calls it "probably the single most significant economic development project in the entire Valley, and it's all occurring Downtown, and for our benefit it's occurring at the doorstep of the Plaza."
The Plaza's back yard also includes a 7-acre site that is likely to become an intermodal transit facility for the monorail, buses and eventual light rail. Anticipating this activity, Barrick will build another 1,200-room hotel tower at the Plaza, an 8,000-seat arena and plans to refurbish the facade of the Las Vegas Club across Main Street. (According to a release on its website, www.barrickgamingcorp.com/home.html, Barrick will transform the Las Vegas Club into "Coyote Ugly meets Beverly Hills.")
Barrick also holds an option to buy El Cortez from Jackie Gaughan, and Crystal says that the "underserved" Latino community will be the focus of its development along East Fremont Street. Barrick plans to convert the Western into "an all-Hispanic resort and casino," according to a press release on its website.
More key to the youth movement, Barrick plans to build high-rise condos on the Plaza property and to develop smaller-scale lofts and condos elsewhere in Downtown.
This ties in neatly with several residential projects planned or under way, such as the SoHo Lofts, a condo tower at Hoover and Las Vegas Boulevard and the Holsum Lofts in the former bakery on West Charleston in the nascent Arts District. Goodman says plans are still on track for a medical center and a residential complex on a 61-acre parcel west of Downtown. "I'm working on it on a daily basis," says the mayor, who planned to meet in New York with several "world-class developers" while on the East Coast for the U.S. Conference of Mayors meeting in Boston.
All of this, Goodman says, will contribute to "the Manhattanizing of Las Vegas," a concentration of money and vitality in a Downtown growing upward in residential, hotel and business towers. And Crystal notes that "a by-product of that will be that increasingly younger people will find this is an exciting place, and already are discovering it."
Barrick has taken steps toward securing that demographic. One sign might have been its willingness to take the bet of British gambler Ashley Revell, who bet his life savings at a Plaza roulette table after the Hard Rock backed out of the deal in April. Revell, 32, walked away with $270,600, but Crystal says the Plaza won "millions of dollars worth of exposure for the company," especially abroad. That in itself is not a youthful activity, but rather one that might appeal to potential younger visitors, not least because the Plaza stepped in when one of their prime Vegas destinations bowed out.
Signing with Dick Clark to produce a variety show at the Plaza might not skew particularly young, but Clark is, after all, the eternal teenager. But Crystal notes that the Plaza, in a promotion with 42 Below Vodka, attracted an impromptu young crowd by installing a DJ under its porte cochere on the night the Fremont Street Experience debuted its new canopy show. The Plaza plans to continue this practice on Saturday nights. In addition, says Crystal, the Plaza has made a deal with a top local club promoter he would not name to bring "his VIP list" to the Plaza's old-style showroom for semi-regular Saturday night parties. The first happened last weekend—Crystal said it would be "our first real experiment with seeing if you can attract the elite of the party scene of Las Vegas to Downtown."
Poker could be another element in the youth revolution. The Golden Nugget opened a poker room, says Shumny, with an eye toward bringing in a younger market. The Plaza's poker room is also part of its appeal to that market. "Poker has become a social activity for young people," Crystal observes.
Still, Crystal and his counterparts at the Nugget have to tread lightly as they make changes. Barrick in particular needs to refurbish its older properties without sacrificing the Old Vegas authenticity that might appeal to some younger visitors. "I think we can accomplish that ... and be true to the roots of the city and not create something that's just another example of the Strip in Downtown," Crystal says.
This is not so much a problem at the Golden Nugget, the neighborhood's premier property and a 27-year winner of the AAA Four Diamond Award. Shumny says he hopes other Downtown properties take notice and spruce things up. And if Barrick gets that ball rolling, the more the merrier, as far as folks at the Nugget are concerned, according to Shumny.
Meanwhile, as Strip properties merge, "that large corporate mentality" might chase some gamers, younger and older, Downtown, Shumny says. "This is the original Vegas. ... It'll open up opportunities for Downtown to differentiate itself."
And that, too, could pay off the mayor's bet.
"I think the future of Southern Nevada is going to be found in our Downtown," Goodman says.