If a city has a pulse then Las Vegas could be said to have an irregular heartbeat. Unique from other cities with our economy and transient population, overbearing with our summer heat, we live in a town difficult to grasp. While our thriving casinos, successful escorts and the ever-present quickie-loan shops speak volumes about what succeeds, there's also a passive social commentary that runs through Las Vegas. It's a story told by the shells of Vegas' past. The empty business building on Las Vegas Boulevard near Bridger. The boarded-up monstrosity next to Commercial Center. The memory of a Bennigan's in Henderson. The skeleton of El Cid casino on Sixth.
The refuse is left behind for a multitude of reasons—market forces, location choice, viability, regional planning. Bob Fielden, principal and director of the Urban Design Studio, explains it in nautical terms. "We're an armada without a flagship," he says, referring to the Valley's many municipal entities (Henderson, North Las Vegas, Las Vegas and Clark County), which aren't quite complementary in their planning.
But ask the city of Las Vegas what vacant buildings say about a community, and the people there are stumped. "We don't have very many vacant buildings," says Scott Adams, director of business development. "You want to see vacant buildings, go to New Orleans." Adams and Steve Van Gorp, the city's acting redevelopment manager, say that—at least in the city—most of the vacant shells are vacant for an underlying reason, and the owners are simply waiting for their land to sell.
But some structures have been vacant for long enough that they seem a part of the local landscape. Their boarded windows remain a testament to a time of vibrancy, or at least optimism, when patrons walked in and out of their doors. But now they're just shells, fading pieces of history waiting to be filled—or imploded—and forgotten.
Just as you can get a feel for a city by searching through the local papers' classified ads, or reading the bathroom graffiti, so too do the vacant buildings tell their own story. They tell a different tale than you glean from reading about murders or G-stings, or flooding. It's a story that's told about what's not there, and only hints at why that is. Here are just a handful.
Start at the corner of Fremont and Eighth street, under the sign, "Your Future Starts Here." It's among the most poignant, resting atop the peeling and dilapidated Professional Dealers School of America at Fremont and Eighth Street. It's a large white building with red and blue stripes along its side, with a simple san serif font spelling out the building's name and your future's inspirational message. It speaks of a time when this street was alive and feeding Downtown casinos with trained employees, giving Fremont Street a sense of economy. But now it screams about the vagaries of gambling and the depressing reality of what east Fremont has become. A street of struggling or vacant hotels, still proudly displaying their heyday in swanky neon signage. But with a future that's far less promising than its past.
Commercial Center was once said to be the largest shopping center in Nevada. While it's not nearly as thriving as it was 40 years ago, it's doing far better than the monstrosity behind it. Fenced off to keep out squatters, the former encasement of Vegas Village is now a boarded-up mess. What was once a grocery and department store in one is now a contributor to blight and an invitation for graffiti. Rather than maintaining the same building over the years as its purpose morphed, developers kept trying to grow and contour the place. "They just kept adding stupid accoutrements to the outside," observed one Vegas native who's watched it evolve over the years, into a farmers market, a swap meet, a bar, and now a memory.
One of the seemingly most egregious wastes of space in recent years is located at Martin Luther King and Vegas Drive. The Guy Ambulatory Care Clinic, an unassuming office-looking veterans health clinic, was constructed in 1997 for $16 million. It closed in June 2003, breaking its lease with the city because engineers found structural defects within the 6-year old building. It's been vacant for more than a year now, forcing veterans to go to satellite health centers as its lawn and trees remain neatly trimmed, its parking lot freshly painted. And the city denies that there was an imminent need to close its doors. "It's the city's take that those defects didn't exist," says Van Gorp.
Market force, location choice, viability, regional planning, vacant buildings. What does that bring to mind? Oh, yes. Neonopolis. That boondoggle of a mall that practically closes itself off from passersby. The city helped pay for it, gushed all over it with their enthusiasm, and where is it now? The tenants on any given day could probably easily take on and defeat the number of patrons. With a movie theater, a gambling "museum," a couple of chain locations and a cool but deserted bar, Necropolis was put up for sale last spring. What's to come is anybody's guess. But the easiest one leads us to a story told all too often, leaving only the bones behind. Waiting for the vultures in the quickie-loan stores to come in and set up shop.