Steve van Gorp, redevelopment manager for the city's Office of Business Development, has had a hand in just about all of those changes.

He talks about the challenges involved in rebuilding a city from the inside out, as well as what other changes are envisioned for Las Vegas.

How did the downtown renovation initiative come about?

The things that have happened around this table the last few years have been amazing. It's been a big transformation. I've been over here at the redevelopment agency 5 1/2 years and been at the city almost 10. In the early years it was really getting out and doing marketing. The Centennial Plan really laid out a vision from what the city could become — letting the development community know that we were ready for development, that we wanted development, that we had adjusted all our codes to make it easy to do development. A lot of cities don't necessarily make it easy to do development. Mayor (Oscar) Goodman's our best cheerleader for development. He got elected in '99 on a platform of redevelopment. So we feel like we had a mandate for redevelopment.

We were on a mission then to go out and really market the Centennial Plan as quickly as we could.

Was that the most difficult thing, generating that initial interest?

I think it was. We did a lot of cold calling to generate interest. It was attracting developers from outside the Las Vegas market. We used to go out to trade shows outside of Las Vegas. We attended a lot of developer-oriented trade shows and planning conferences outside of Las Vegas.

Are there projects you can point to that really made you feel as if things were starting to happen downtown?

For me the turning point was the two big projects. The turning point came probably five years ago when Chelsea came in and said they wanted to do the outlet mall downtown, Las Vegas Premium Outlets, and then when World Market Center fell in our lap. Chelsea came to us and said they wanted to do a mall downtown, but they were a little skittish on the downtown market. They wanted it to be right off Interstate 15, so they identified that site at Charleston (Boulevard) and I-15 and they had just opened the mall in Orlando, so that was really their model.

Then World Market Center came in and was initially conceived of as a wholesale furniture mart and was not initially conceived of as the big project it is today. It was initially going to be located over at Martin Luther King (Boulevard) and Alta (Drive) on that vacant corner there. As soon as they started marketing the project, they realized they had a much bigger project on their hands, so they moved over to the corner they are at now. Once we landed both of those projects, I think we realized that the corner was going to turn. Then we acquired the Union Park site

For me, and I think for everyone around the city, it's those three things that really began to sync the whole Union Park master-planned area. It really gave us an anchor for the whole new side of downtown and gave us an incentive for marketing the older parts of downtown on the east side of the tracks. We knew we had momentum then.

Are you satisfied with the progress at Union Park?

Absolutely. The construction of Union Park is our primary project right now. We have three or four big projects that we're focused on at OBD right now, but Union Park is our primary project.

What about the Queen of Hearts block? Is (Cleveland-based developer) Forest City committed to that project?

Queen of Hearts and the whole Forest City-Livework project is one of our other big projects right now. The Queen of Hearts block is a high-priority possibility now for City Hall. We're doing a final analysis through the city manager's office right now for where City Hall should go. By the end of the year or early next year, we should know a final choice for where City Hall should go.

How have escalating building costs affected downtown redevelopment?

We're seeing a trend now, the markets are shifting a little so we're in a downturn. I see condominium developments in other cities and in this city follow kind of a wave, kind of a sine curve. We've seen our first crest and now we're on the downside. During this correction where it's hard to finance condominiums, developers are coming in and we're seeing discussion about apartments, affordable housing, mid-rise and low-rise buildings. As land values are beginning to drop and be corrected again instead of land selling for $150 or $200 per square foot, you're seeing land for $115 to $120 a square foot. That's attracting developers to come in and build four- and five-story stick-built housing again. We're seeing things like Urban Lofts Townhouses come back in. We're seeing some more podium housing come in, and there's a couple projects coming in that are prefabricated. We're seeing a different type of project come in, which I think will give more diversity to downtown and will bring more affordable housing in.

Do you think it will be more true residential, as opposed to speculators?

We hope so, that was always our goal. We don't mind speculators and second or third home buyers coming into downtown. But to build a really true downtown, one of the things that we identified, when we brought the downtown plan forward, was that we really needed a true residential environment. Until you can get 15,000 or 20,000 units up and have, say, 40,000 people living in the downtown core, you're not going to have a true downtown.

What are the plans for the Queen of Hearts block?

The Queen of Hearts is one of the five blocks of the Livework project. It straddles both sides of Bonneville at Main, so it's the two blocks east of Main and south of Bonneville and the two blocks north of Bonneville East of Main and then the Queen of Hearts block between Lewis and Clark east of Main. The discussion we have now with Livework is a land exchange for the Queen of Hearts Block in exchange for them taking parcel "p" and "q," which is the one gaming site that's reserved on the Union Park Master Plan. We're going through negotiations currently as to what the valuations are on both parcels. The (city) manager's office and the city council would then need to agree to that, and accept our negotiations and agree on a methodology for funding a new City Hall.

What would go here (at the current City Hall site)?

The idea would be that we would dispose of this parcel as a redevelopment project as well. Then that kind of gets close to another big project that's going on. CIM, a developer out of the L.A. area, is under exclusive negotiating agreement with us now and they are about to acquire the Lady Luck. They are to look at the Lady Luck and the six acres around the old Post Office, which includes (Frank Wright Plaza) park and the bus terminal site. They are interested, then, in what further redevelopment potential is outside of that. By Oct. 18, they are to present the city a sketch master plan of what their development plans would be for the Lady Luck and the area around the Post Office. Some of the projects they did in California are the Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica — they've been in projects up and down Hollywood Boulevard and they've just acquired the Grauman's Chinese Theatre. They've made strategic acquisitions along that whole six-block area. They are an investment owner and the financier for all of their projects, too. They are a $2 billion equity owner.

It seems as if Forest City and Union Park are going to create a bridge to bring Union Park into the center of downtown. Is that the goal?

The goal is absolutely to connect old downtown with new downtown and to make as many linkages as possible. They were never meant to be separate areas. I think it would be too easy to develop the new parts of downtown at the disadvantage of old downtown. We always saw the development of Union Park as a catalyst to spur more development in the older parts of downtown. We're still hoping with the Tamares properties that sit in-between — the Union Plaza is about 17 acres that sit between the tracks and Main Street — that more linkages can be developed. We're pursuing pedestrian passages over the train tracks now at Clark, where the park crosses over at Lewis and, hopefully, a major connection where the Plaza and the "PQ" parcels would link. We still fantasize about the potential to rebuild the Plaza Hotel at some point and link the two casino sites together. We had at one point held our breath and hoped that all would be one fantastic redevelopment of a "Superplaza" Hotel straddling both sides of the train track. We're waiting for a decision on what (the Plaza owners) are doing with their portfolio.

What's the latest on Fremont East, now that renovations are completed?

It's very exciting. I think it's easier to sell the district now that all the street improvements are in. It was hard to walk around the district either during construction or before the improvements were in. Now that it's done, it's a lot easier for us to show the district and sell the idea of it being a musical entertainment district. We're getting a lot more interest now. It's fun to be down there at night. I was at a party on the Strip last night and it's fun to have people in their 20s and early 30s come up to me. They knew I was a downtown guy and asked about Fremont East and what clubs are coming next. They said they've been to downtown or been to Beauty Bar and just kind of thanked us. There's kind of a downtown vibe going on. It's very cool. That is a great change from even two years ago. Certainly five or 10 years ago nobody would say downtown was a cool place to hang out.

We've got more clubs in the works. Club V is in construction right now, and there's been an announcement that the Venue of Vegas is going to built at Eighth and Fremont where the old dealer's school sits now, on the northwest corner. The guys who have done the Venue of Scottsdale are doing the Venue of Vegas, they want to be open as soon in 2008 as possible. It's going to be a large multi-use center that's going to be a daytime kind of conference center and an evening nightclub venue for musical concerts.

What are the next opportunities downtown?

Right now we're seeing a lot of interest in office development. Certainly, the Livework project is proposing a substantial retail component, an office component. We think there is more market opportunity for that. The Union Park project is proposing a substantial office component and retail component, more residential. We think downtown is going to build out as a tremendous mixed-use environment. We see that downtown really can become the core of office development in the valley. There's no real heart and soul, no center, for office development in the valley. The office development has been pretty shotgun all over the valley. There's no opportunity on the Strip and Hughes Center has been built down. There's not going to be any more office development down there, and it's so hard to get in and out of for traffic down there. Downtown is right at the convergence and center of the valley and with all of the highway widenings that are going on in and around the "Spaghetti Bowl" the next couple of years, we see downtown as becoming the office core for the valley. We see the opportunity to build several more million square feet of office on the Union Park site and then in the downtown core around the courthouses, so we're encouraging and working with developers to do that. Forest City is proposing to build a substantial amount of office space on their site.

Medical offices are a tremendous opportunity in the core and around the edges of downtown. We've talked to several developers lately about doing that as well. To attract more clinics and continue to support the research and medical office development that we need in the valley.

It seems the focus of Neonopolis is shifting from retail to office, or at least mixed use, is that accurate?

The city doesn't own Neonopolis. Neonopolis above grade is owned by a private developer interest. The city has some veto power in that we own the parking garage and the land underneath Neonopolis, so it's a cooperative arrangement. We want to see Neonopolis be successful. It's at a critical point, between everything we're trying to do now, between Fremont Street Experience and our new entertainment district. It's at a juncture point between some of our other redevelopment projects, like what CIM is going to do with the Lady Luck and between other things happening up and down the boulevard. It's at our hundred percent corner between Las Vegas Boulevard and Fremont, and to have it sit empty for so long has been difficult for us. It was opened with such hoopla and advertised with such hoopla to be the savior of downtown by the previous (mayoral) administration that it's been very difficult on Mayor Goodman and on the Redevelopment Agency to have had it become such a tremendous failure almost from the day it opened. We want it to be a success now and it's really the last black eye on this redevelopment staff. Everything around it now is successful and we want it to work and this project should have been probably more attended to between 1999 and 2002 and shouldn't have opened half-empty from the get-go.

We are just trying to work with the current owner, and it's really his decision what the tenant mix is. He (owner's representative Rohit Joshi) does talk to us occasionally about what some of the plans are for tenants and tells us what tenants he's trying to chase. We have him on a monthly schedule to stop by OBD and give us an update on where he's at. We've met with some of his potential tenants as well and we've had debates with him about the appropriateness of some of his potential tenants.

At this point, is there a feeling that the city will take what it can get, as long as the structure is filled?

I'm not sure that's our opinion. I think we want a good mix of tenants over there that contribute to the vibrancy of Fremont Street. Just paying the rent would be Joshi's primary concern, I guess, for his owners, to pay the rent and add value to the property. Just paying the rent is not our primary concern in fulfilling the development agreement because we may never see a cut of the action on the rents over there. We have a fiduciary responsibility to the taxpayers in paying off the bonds on the parking garage and right now the taxpayers are still paying off about $2.5 million in public debt that the previous administration absorbed on that parking garage. We may never recoup those losses now from the deal the way it's structured. The original deal, the way it was received is that the place would be golden, that it would be fully rented up and that the retail leases would be kicking back 8 percent of the leases to the agency to pay off that $2.5 million a year and that has never been achieved so the agency is still having to pay off those bonds for the parking garage.

Several city officials, yourself included, took a trip to Wall Street last year. What did you hope to accomplish?

The concept was to try to bolster Wall Street's confidence in financing projects in downtown Las Vegas. We're going back this year to try to understand Wall Street's position in Las Vegas and understand better what kind of projects Wall Street is still willing to have confidence in, with the understanding that there is a changing financial climate now. There is still more confidence in downtown Las Vegas now that we have a few projects under our belt. World Market Center is building its third phase and about to move into its fourth phase. We have a number of condo projects completed now, and there are some major developers that have moved into the marketplace, such as Forest City and CIM, that weren't here last year. We're going back to Wall Street again to talk to them about downtown Las Vegas, to talk to them about financing projects and to get their pulse on what kind of projects they will finance in the next year, or two or three and to continue to seek their advice.

Are there concerns about all of the condo projects being filled? Some say they have been bought but are not being occupied.

Some units are being sold to primary residents. CityMark (the owners of Juhl) has had a great track record, with 72 percent of the units sold to owner-occupants. A lot have been sold to Las Vegas folks shifting lifestyles and empty- nesters, folks who have raised their kids and are moving down now, out of a single-family suburban house and want to move into an urban lifestyle. I think we're going to see a lot more owner-occupied units. We understand that there are going to be some investor units and some second-and-third-homeowners buying units downtown. Our goal is to have as many owner-occupied units downtown as possible, so that the lights are on and we have as many folks living downtown and out on the streets downtown as possible. We understand some of the first projects downtown had less owner occupied units, but we think that will shift over time as there's more to do downtown.

What about REI and the downtown arena? Is the city still enthusiastic about that project?

We met again this morning on the REI project, as we do every Thursday morning for the last two months now. The city is completely gung ho on the project and is working diligently. We're going to extend the MOU for another month until the end of October, so we can work out final details.

Is there a contingency plan for that neighborhood? If the project is not built it could leave a pretty big hole over there.

The discussions, right now, is for a phased project. The initial phase would be the arena and those portions of phase one which would be probably the first 20 acres. I don't know that we can go into more detail than that right now. I think the whole project will go public late in October.

How successful have the initiative projects such as the Visual Improvement Program (VIP) and the ground floor retail concept been?

We have several programs run through the redevelopment agency. Our oldest program is probably VIP, which we rolled out last year. It's a very successful program that grew out of helping a small business. We just stepped up and helped a small businessman because he came in and asked, and it seemed like the right thing to do, and the right thing to do for council.

The agency had a history of only helping big businesses under the previous administration and we were never out on the streets helping small businesses. We decided we should not only help big business attract into the downtown area to do projects, but we should also be helping small businesses move into storefronts, so we decided to form a program and give it a proper name and VIP was born. We've done some targeted programs as well. Throughout the entire redevelopment area, almost the whole 4,000 acres of the redevelopment plan, we will help small businessmen, anyone who asks, who has a need. A new tenant moving into a storefront that needs sprucing up or needs to put up a sign or a coat of paint, up to bigger projects like a whole new façade or storefront, (can get) up to a $50,000 match to do improvements. We've done targeted programs for the entertainment district up to $75,000 and have helped try to focus on doing some of the great neon signs, such as you see at the Griffin (a club on Fremont Street), those signs are very expensive. If you're on a corner you can get up to $95,000 because it's even more expensive when a sign wraps around a corner. We've also set aside some money for the Arts District, so we have a targeted program there.

We set up a fast track program and we have two people on staff that do that. What they do is help people get through everything from soup to nuts, going from the planning department and getting entitlements to picking up their certificate of occupancy. Even though it's really simple to go through entitlements, simpler than any other city I've heard about or worked in, it's still a good idea to take one of these guys with you.

We've just started up our Retail Las Vegas program, which is a targeted program for helping to fill up all of the great retail that we're building downtown. Our downtown Centennial Plan requires that 70 percent of the ground floor be retail. We want to make sure all of the retail is leased up when the building opens. We don't want any of these projects sitting with empty retail downtown. That can be really hard on a downtown environment, to have empty retail sitting around. If we start building too much of it and not getting it filled up, that starts to put a bit of a monkey wrench on downtown, as well.

If everything comes together, it seems downtown will look a lot different in five years. What is your ultimate vision for downtown?

I accepted this job because I saw there was tremendous opportunity here, but when I landed here, I saw a downtown that was not alive. It had the bones to be a good downtown, but it was really just a skeleton waiting to be infilled. It had a good street grid and urban fabric, but it didn't have any of the building components that it needed. I want to see a downtown that is truly walkable, that is extremely vibrant, with people having a good time, sitting in cafes having a great meal. I want to see people going to nightclubs and bouncing from one club to another in the entertainment district. I want it to feel like when I go to San Diego and walk around the Gaslight District or when I walk around the Village in New York City. I want to feel a vibrant urban city. I think we've laid out the ground rules and invited the developers in. Now it's just a matter of putting all the pieces together.

You talked about some other cities. Is there a model, or do you just want to borrow some things that have worked elsewhere?

I don't know that there's a strict model. I think Las Vegas has to be allowed to be its own city. I think you can borrow from other cities. With my background in architecture and urban planning I think one of the first things I saw is that Las Vegas is a unique city, so imposing the ideas from another city is probably not the right thing to do. Las Vegas is a cool, unique city, so we should allow Las Vegas to be Las Vegas. It has its own vibe and character.

What's next for the city?

The next opportunity is to incorporate the arts downtown. Union Park is going to contain a performing arts center. The opportunity to build other cultural arts facilities in the downtown is really important. We're talking to other cultural facilities about locating in the downtown area because of that. We're talking to other theaters and museums in the downtown. People are taking us seriously enough that we are actually implementing the vision of the Centennial Plan, and I think that's always been the goal, and we are well on the way to achieving it.