It's no small irony that the very week UNLV President Carol Harter figuratively leapt across Maryland Parkway to concern herself with the lack of a "street scene," UNLV also announced it was offering a course on sports betting. Creating a top-flight university in Vegas, or, as Harter specificies, a metropolitan research university, is far more acrobatic a task than we might immediately imagine. In addition to fostering scientific research and a love of sports books, it involves bistros and wandering flautists.
At her state of the college address last week, which was handily more inspired than either the Bush or Kerry acceptance speeches, Harter showed herself to be wholly capable of thinking outside the box; in fact, outside the parameters of academic pedantry. The way to make UNLV more appealing to quality students, the way to encourage student involvement in the community and community involvement in the university, the way to develop a creative, productive, economically diverse city, is to spruce up the shopping and dining areas around the university. After all, this is an age driven ever more by consumerism and entertainment—money and fun—so what better place to elaborately stage the appearance of an organic creative community than Las Vegas?
So Harter stood on the stage at the packed Judy Bayley theater, her podium surrounded by plants and backed by flags, the stage otherwise dark so the slide show could be seen on the screen above, and said, "What is clearly underdeveloped in Las Vegas is the particular social and cultural climate that characterizes Madison, Wisconsin; Boulder, Colorado; and particularly Austin, Texas."
A lot of people have said something similar when ticking off laments about Vegas. The eternally burgeoning Arts District notwithstanding, where's the scene? And here was the university president saying it in her state of the university address, sounding more frustrated hipster than chief higher-ed fund-raiser. She showed slides of Arizona State University's Mill Avenue arts festival, complete with shops and artisans and coffeehouses and street musicians, and quipped, "Isn't that spectacular? That's what we can have." One might have heard a gasp from the culturally starved audience.
She developed her theory of "Midtown UNLV" after reading Richard Florida's The Rise of the Creative Class, which celebrates cities that court young, brainy, creative professionals in fields such as architecture and engineering, technology and music. Florida says that an abundance of creative professionals is what makes a city best prepared for growth and prosperity in the next century; by his measure, Vegas is a horrid bore of a city held captive by the noncreative service industry.
Somehow, Harter is not dismayed. "... We have several of the qualities that will eventually allow us to join the ranks of first-class cities, and we are rapidly moving on several fronts to accomplish that goal." Strip production-show artists and engineers are here, she said, and Vegas ranks high in diversity and tolerance (an assertion that drew a few titters in the audience), and it has a large supply of writers, actors, musicians, designers and photographers.
The path toward success as a community and university, she noted, just moments after welcoming Oscar Goodman to the audience, is not in peddling gin or building ballparks: "Florida finds little evidence in his exhaustive research that big-ticket attractions—for example, expensive sports arenas, modern malls and other high-price endeavors—attract the creative class ... [they] are much more attracted to outdoor recreation and a cutting-edge music scene, cafes, small galleries and bistros, even nonalcoholic hangouts ..."
A puddle of what appears to be urine sits under a beat-up, graffiti-covered pay phone in the corner of the two-story Promenade shopping center across Maryland Parkway from UNLV's main entrance. Storefronts are empty: There's a handwritten sign on one that says, "Doggystyle Café has closed." On another, "Coming Soon: Hucklebuck Tattoo Parlor." It's dirty and noisy from traffic rushing by, and the peach paint on the plywood facade is chipping off. On a bench above what used to be a cherished coffee spot, Café Espresso Roma, a slump-backed guy is drinking from a brown bag and staring at his toes.
The Promenade is owned by Michael Saltman, a well-respected local businessman and UNLV trustee who runs The Vista Group real-estate investment company. Saltman also owns several other nearby properties, and last Thursday he was among the hundreds of people running in from a quick, hard rain to watch Harter's speech.
"Michael Saltman ... and his architects," Harter told the crowd, "have created some highly imaginative conceptual drawings that illustrate a vision of what the area around campus might look like."
The images were flashed on screen: traffic roundabouts and cute trees, quaint storefronts and room for bicycles and more pedestrians. Atop the shops, lofts where students and faculty would want to live in the heart of a casual, stylish neighborhood. The pictures, both sketches of would-be-Vegas and photos of Mill Avenue in Tempe, showed a vast difference from the picture painted by the current crime statistics within one mile of UNLV: In the last two months, Metro has responded to nearly 400 crimes, including more than a hundred stolen vehicles.
The area has gone through ups and downs—popularity and property values have risen and fallen, according to UNLV professor Mike Clauretie, who was tapped to research more than 100 properties within a quarter-mile radius of UNLV. In addition to commercial sites, nearby residential properties, too, suffer from lack of upkeep. Efforts have been made before to revitalize the neighborhood, and at times, a new business would revive it for a while. But nothing seemed to keep new energy going.
Even UNLV's campus is not a peaceful garden of academic brilliance. It's a giant construction zone. Another new building is being built on the mall, and on an average school day, a few students sit on the grass near the outdoor amphitheater watching cement trucks maneuver behind a chain-link fence. Like the Promenade across the street, it's loud and dusty.
By contrast, in recent years, Tempe also dammed a wash and made a small campus-side lake near Mill Avenue—an addition that, combined with its modern take on a quaint shopping street, makes a Vegas mind think of Lake Las Vegas or The District at Green Valley Ranch. A faux University of Beautiful Scenery and Creative Culture.
Organic? Not exactly. But is Vegas a place that waits around for naturally occurring social phenomena? Note that First Friday, considered by many to be the more authentic, self-sustaining version of contra-casino culture, has turned to casinos for sponsorship.
A few weeks ago, Harter, Saltman and an entourage of their staffers came to visit Clark County Manager Thom Reilly, county planners and a few commissioners to put the plan in motion.
"Something like this has been needed for so long," Reilly says. "We've heard some of this before, but this was more concrete. They said, 'Here are the drawings,' and we talked about what some of the next steps are."
One huge consideration is traffic. Maryland Parkway is already a disaster zone with a combination of pedestrians, stop 'n' go drivers and speedsters passing through on the way to the airport tunnel. Reilly said traffic studies will be conducted shortly, along with public works, planning and land-use studies.
"It's perfect timing, because we're about to go through a series of land-use planning community meetings with the Paradise and Winchester communities [in which UNLV sits]," Reilly said. "Everybody we've talked to believes it is a positive idea," and county officials plan to meet with Tempe Mayor Neil Guiliano on Monday. Other investors will have to get onboard to create an unprecedented public-private effort to improve both university and neighborhood.
As for the speed of development, Reilly, who went to ASU for his graduate studies, says, "That's a good question. I think it took ASU about 20 years ... but I would think it could be faster here."
"What we may have underestimated in the past—and what is clearer to me every day—is how the development of our university links directly and vibrantly to the development of our community and our economy," Harter said, closing her speech. "Help create the synergies that bind us together as one creative community ..."
Carol Harter left the stage through a curtain, and the crowd gave hearty applause. It made sense. Where does setting have a deeper history of impacting culture than on university campuses? Think of Madison if you wish; think of USC or Harvard Square. Does it matter which came first, the thriving cultural life or the cutting-edge academics? That's a question Vegas has asked and answered over the wails of naysayers innumerable times. What city can re-create any setting on Earth and bring people who want to experience it?
Harter has made the call: Build an extended university environment and the culture will follow. It's part fake-it-till-you-make-it, part economic-development basics, part pure chutzpah, all Vegas.