Question of the Day - 17 September 2023

[Editor's Note: This epic answer is written by our Stiffs & Georges blogger David McKee.]

We can’t speak to the sanity of people who park in the Linq (formerly Imperial Palace) garage, especially during monsoon season. It inevitably results in viral videos like this. And more recently, this.

On one occasion in 1983, flood waters were so strong that they swept through the casino floor, several feet deep, leaving it encased in mud. Five hundred guests fled onto the Las Vegas Strip.

What indeed looks like a drainage canal, as you say, is actually a natural phenomenon, the Flamingo Wash. Mankind has foolishly sought to ignore it by building around and over it, but Mother Nature invariably has the last word.

“Blame it on Ralph Englestad,” we wrote in 2015, referring to the casino developer and owner who built Imperial Palace.

While that’s partly true, this structural failure had many fathers and not just the famously cheapskate Imperial Palace founder. It begins with the Flamingo Capri Motel in 1959. The owners and developers were George E. Goldberg and Bill Capri. (Yeah, we thought it was named after the Italian island paradise too.) In an effort to capitalize on a disadvantageous location, they built the motel over the wash, which they defensively characterized as a “Venetian canal.”

Fast-forward to 1971 and the arrival of Engelstad, a bargain-minded and combative casino magnate. He tacked a casino onto the Flamingo Capri and started adding rooms vertically. He expanded the motel in bits and pieces, renaming it Imperial Palace in 1979. The name and ticky-tacky decor were a nod to one of Engelstad’s beloved Axis powers, Japan. (You can still get a good look at Engelstad’s design scheme by riding the Linq’s Ferris wheel.)

Still, how did the Clark County Commission ever approve Engelstad’s casino-on-the-waters plan? Las Vegas Review-Journal reporter and Sin City historian Jeff Burbank takes up the tale.

“They were given permission only after agreeing to basically build the IP on ‘stilts,’ or a bunch of strong columns dug deep into the ground that would raise the first floor high up, then just allow the water to flow in the parking lot beneath it and into the sewer channel. It was a concession to the fact that floods are going to happen there, but you can build over it.”

In other words, inscribe the names of the Clark County commissioners alongside those of Goldberg, Capri, and Engelstad on the property’s wall of blame.

When a parking garage was needed, Engelstad erected it — where else? — over the wash. Flood risks seemed to be part of the cost of doing business the Engelstad way. The only concession to the rains was to close the garage during flooding, meaning guests couldn’t get in or out. Fortunately, this variation on the "customer-capture" strategy of casino design hasn't been emulated elsewhere in Las Vegas, although it could have been. 

It should be added that, after the Engelstad family sold Imperial Palace, subsequent owners have made little effort to remediate the problem. A belated retrofit was promised in 2020, but nothing came of it. Similar flooding problems could have affected both Caesars Palace and Westgate Las Vegas, but those resorts invested millions of dollars in flood prevention.

Although the predicament has its ludicrous side, there’s more than a helping of tragedy to it. After flood waters trapped two men in a Ford Mustang during an April 2, 2004, deluge (requiring a Fire Department rescue), Las Vegas Sun reporter Molly Ball asked Imperial Palace’s Jeremy Handel about the problem and found, “Despite urging from flood-control officials, the Imperial Palace has no plans to make its parking garage more flood-safe.” 

Handel tried to spin a joke off it, saying, “If we could influence the weather in any way, I’m sure we would.”

But Ball wasn't amused. “He would not comment on the effect of such incidents on the hotel's image with customers or its bottom line.”

The two men in the Mustang were far more fortunate than an unnamed 25-year-old woman who was swept out of her car on Arville Street on July 16, 1990. Her body was later found in the lower level of the Imperial Palace garage. As recently as 2017, six people were trapped by flash flooding in the garage and had to be rescued, as cars were partially inundated.

The curse of the Imperial Palace garage has been inherited by Caesars Entertainment (at the time of the takeover, Harrah’s Entertainment). Seeking to consolidate its dominance of the east side of the Strip, Harrah’s purchased Imperial Palace for $370 million in August 2005. At first, it appeared that Harrah’s would level the place and start afresh. Then-CEO Gary Loveman even harrumphed that it was “going to require very substantial modifications or complete tear-downs and rebuilds.”

However, that was before Loveman loaded up Harrah’s with leveraged buyout debt, driving it bankrupt in the process. Out went any thought of imploding Imperial Palace, let alone fixing the flooding embarrassment. Various attempts were made to perfume the pig by renaming it the Quad and, soon after, the Linq. 

At least the latter makeover was accompanied by extensive renovations … that again, somehow never got around to the garage. As the Las Vegas Review-Journal discovered, flood vulnerability could not be remediated without sapping the underpinnings of the garage itself.

The company’s official response to LVA ran as follows: “There is no guest parking on the ground level at Linq. Guest parking is accessed by going up a ramp and through the metered gates. The Linq parking garage is above a designated flood channel, so when Las Vegas experiences heavy rains, the channel fills as designed to carry water further along the Flamingo Wash. 

“Earlier in its history, hotel guests may have had to wait for waters to recede to exit the garage. However, in 2016, Linq installed new parking ramps, which ensure guests have access out of the garage regardless of the flood channel status.” 

“I know the video from the channel under the garage is always compelling,” says a source familiar with Caesars, “but it always prompts this idea that the property is flooded or that guest parking is at risk, which is not the case.” Ergo, no flood waiver for parked guests, it would appear.

Unless or until Caesars Entertainment and its landlords at Vici Properties determine that it's finally time to level the Linq (though that's not likely for foreseeable future), floodwaters are going to be a regular sight for guests. To look on the bright side, without Caesars’ incremental efforts to rechannel the water, the September 2, 2023, deluge at The Linq would surely have been far worse.