In the land of the blind…
There are moments in Vegas when you know better, you just know that you should have had a drink before the meeting, but then you walk into it straight and all the ridiculousness that you might have otherwise let pass, just leaps out to confront you.
The all too sober DayDrinker had one such meeting the other day with the smarmy Smith Center man. Here’s how it began:
Smarmy Smith Man: “We created the center to be a perfect opera house.”
DayDrinker: “Oh, will there be opera?”
Smarmy Smith Man: “No.”
Off to a rolicking start! It was just then that he had to ask the receptionist to please remind him in twenty minutes that he had to leave for “his luncheon with the Mayor”. Egads! Pretension much? But that’s rather the problem with the center in general, isn’t it?
A whole lot of undeserved pretension. It’s funny really, sitting so close to a building that got it so right. The Smith Center, not to be confused with Las Vegas High to which it bears a canny resemblance, sits right next to the Gehry designed Lou Ruvo Center for Brain Health.
The Smith Center is the Peter Keating to the Ruvo Center’s Howard Roark. The Ruvo Center, a Cleveland Clinic run clinic has a Wolfgang Puck run cafe open to the public and an amazing literally one of a kind atrium in which they will host functions to help defray the cost of the building. The Smith Center, priding itself that it will be the center of the new “community” in downtown Vegas has a two acre park in front of it… with absolutely no refreshments for sale, so even if you wanted to picnic, you’d be shit out of luck, or I guess you could go to the Ruvo center.
But the bad design, the lack of opera and food aside, the one comment that really just threw me over the edge was when asked if the Smith Center, the one that was supposed to be creating and supporting this new Vegas “community” (the source of so much local hand wringing), when asked if they would have rehearsal space available to smaller dance and theatre troops, the people who in reality form the backbone of any real community, the reply was, and I kid you not “We’re not trying to be all things to all people. It’s important for those groups to be out in the community.”
What did I miss? Commuwhat?
It might have been comical if he hadn’t been so fucking earnest. He was trying so hard for this group of first generation money to feel equal of if not superior to the old bluebloods that he and they totally missed the fucking mark. Vegas is Vegas. Vegas is never going to be fucking downtown Cincinnati, New York, and certainly not Milan, no matter how many expense account trips you take to La Scala. And that what’s so startling about the way some people are trying to grow the town. City Center looks like an airport in middle America. The Smith Center, “made out of Indiana Limestone, the same stone that built over 40 of our state capitols” looks like downtown anywhere USA.
Let Vegas be Vegas! Tourists, even medical ones, don’t want to come to a place that looks just like the one they left behind.
Oh, and the cherry on top, here’s a guy who’s job it is to convince people to help pay for the $500 million Center (yeah, you read that right), to tell them that this is going to spur urban development, bring Vegas back at the same time that it grows up, transforming Vegas into a cultural force to be reckoned with, a thriving downtown, a great place to live, work and play blah blah blah, he even has the lame vanity plate “SMHCNTR” on his BMW, and he’s moving. He and his family are moving from “near the airport” to Henderson.
Well there goes the neighborhood.
