Clark County may have stepped up enforcement of an existing law involving "abandoned news racks on the Strip that require permits. The county can cancel the permit if the news racks are empty for five days and the owner has received a notice to put publications in it within seven days," according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal’s Ben Botkin. He further writes, "county officials have approved a plan to put a system of news racks in place that all have the same design. That design includes a sloped top that a passerby cannot leave a drink on."
Clark County has been cracking down on off-Strip news racks as a source of neighborhood blight. However, its beef with the ones on the Strip is that they constitute a pedestrian obstruction. In 2013, the Clark County Commission pondered an outright ban on all news racks between Sahara Avenue and Russell Road. Despite some vocal support on the commission, it expired without ever being voted upon. A First Amendment challenge was in the offing and Clark County commissioners weren’t keen to tangle with the ACLU.
Taking another crack at the nut, the Clark County Commission passed an ordinance whereby vendors would have to remove their racks and have them replaced with the ones of uniform appearance referred to earlier. The county will maintain the racks and rent them to vendors.
"Right now we’re in the process of putting together a bid document," says Clark County spokesman Erik Pappa. Bids will be taken in the coming months and then the winning bidder will be chosen, although the timeline is rather hazy at this point. "The move would allow the county to standardize the appearance and coordinate the location of news racks. The news racks, which come in weathered shades of white, red and yellow, have been criticized for their ugly appearance and for impeding foot traffic," reported the Las Vegas Sun.
"Currently, if you walk up and down the Strip, you see a hodgepodge of news racks, different vendors, shapes, sizes," confirms Pappa. "The situation [however] has changed and it is better. We were getting complaints from tourists about the aesthetics of the Strip. The experience was not as it should be."
At the time the ordinance was passed there were 288 news racks on the Strip that would be affected, at a cost of $400,000. ("We are sending out renewal notices now; the number may change if owners do not renew their permits," says Pappa. "Some locations are currently under construction and may add to the total once activated.") That’s part of a broader Strip cleanup that includes moving fire hydrants, light poles and utility boxes, to make them less of an obstruction. (Interestingly, there are now types of fire hydrants that are flush to the ground.) To ensure equal access to Strip medallions (i.e., permits), would-be rack vendors must have their bid placed in a bingo drum, from which the lucky winners are randomly drawn.
According to Pappa, Clark County already removed some racks following the 2013 Kimley-Horn & Associates Pedestrian Traffic Study, which identified bottlenecks on the Strip. At the time, Southwestern Advertising President Kathryn Gentile protested the targeting of news racks, pointing out that only once did Kimley-Horn identify them as an obstruction and, in that case, recommended their relocation, not removal. "We’ve had some spots taken" affirms Strip Advertising owner Eddie Munoz, who maintains 450 racks in the vicinity of the Strip. "At Planet Hollywood we’re merely on the side streets." Calling the county commission the puppet of the hotel owners, Munoz likens the rack-replacement initiative to the removal of phone books from hotel rooms, characterizing it as one in a series of power grabs. He says he wasn’t consulted on losing three of his sites. "They just went ahead and did it. They still haven’t given us an explanation."
Munoz tells LVA that he’s down to 35 sites on the Strip, from a high of 80. He maintains that he observes the news-rack code and that his boxes are smaller than the allowable maximum size, and are kept to the back of the sidewalk. "We do our maintenance and here’s the commission saying it’s an obstruction, and it’s a big lie."
Commission Chairman Steve Sisolak stood by the new rules in a May interview with the Sun. "It provides consistency in the news racks. You know that they’re going to be well done because we’re doing them, instead of leaving it to some operators who might be less responsible than others. We’re in no way is endorsing or advocating for any product or service that’s represented," Sisolak continued. "My concern is that we clean up the Strip, that we make it safe for people and that we comply with the First Amendment."
