Chrome Dome

Last weekend, as I ploughed into a pile of analyst reports, court filings, etc., I came across a Clark County Commission planning report on Christopher Milam, Paul & Sue Lowden‘s proposed Silver State Arena. As you can see, it would be an externally attractive facility and an exponential improvement on the various eyesores Milam has pitched for the old Wet ‘n Wild site in the past.

However, as I read through the document, all I could think was, “This is going to raise hell in the neighborhood” and so it has. Under withering fire, Milam has momentarily rescinded his application, although one wonders if it could ever be amended sufficiently to be A) amenable to nearby residents, B) palatable to subsidy-wary commissioners and C) realistic.

Not everything in Milam’s submission is pie-in-the-sky: At 20,014 seats, Silver State Arena would be one of the larger NBA venues (if — a huge “if” — Milam could land a team). Only the Palace at Auburn Hills, immortalized by a certain Ron Artest career highlight, is significantly bigger.

Where to begin? How about Milam’s request to diminish the buffer zone between outdoor events and live entertainment, and neighboring Turnberry Place from 200-500 feet to zilch? Yeah, that went over real well, especially given that carnival rides, outdoor rodeo events and an external loudspeaker system were on Milam’s Christmas list. “[A]ll temporary outdoor events will be conducted on the north side of the arena, which is far away from residential development.” You say that now but …

A plan to move the UNLV basketball team to the Strip also seems remarkably deaf to local tensions between residents and the tourist industry. If the Runnin’ Rebels were plucked from the Thomas & Mack Arena and replanted next door to the Sahara, the public backlash would probably be immense, widening the fissure between the Strip and Las Vegans.

From a practical standpoint, Milam steps in it right on page one, where he requests a 14% reduction in parking spaces from 5,750 to 4,963. (The T&M has 11,000 spaces and still event parking routinely spills over into the neighborhood. Just swing by my house on game night and try to find the curb.) Milam blithely assumes that “many patrons will arrive via alternative modes of transportation.” Clearly, he has never ridden Strip buses, which proceed at glacial pace, and — at $5 a head — the Las Vegas Monorail isn’t much of an alternative. Besides, even the nearest Monorail station is a healthy jaunt from the proposed arena site. Car-pooling had better come back into fashion with a vengeance.

Clark County planners aren’t convinced either mass transit and the Monorail will absorb all that traffic. What’s more, they make the salient point that holding 200+ events at the north end of the Strip means dumping an additional 4,443 cars into traffic all at once. Traffic and Sahara Ave. and the Strip is no picnic as things stand. Planners note with concern that residents of both the Turnberry and John S. Park neighborhoods may kept out of (or imprisoned in) their homes by increased gridlock before and after arena events. They also note that proximity to the Las Vegas Convention Center would amplify problems in that area, too, as arena and convention traffic spill into one another.

The playing field, incidentally, would be only 25 feet below grade. That means Silver State Arena would be not unlike the infamous Kingdome in Seattle (long since demolished). The Kingdome’s baseball diamond was at grade, meaning patrons had to walk up to every seat in the arena. A friend of mine described it as a facility seemingly designed by the Sporting Commission of Bucharest.

Questions still begged include whether Milam and the not-so-deep-pocketed Lowdens could actually land either an NHL or an NBA team (either of which would be “warehoused” at an off-Strip arena for two years until Silver State is completed). Besides, is Las Vegas ready for a repeat of NBA All-Star Weekend, one of the worst calamities in Strip history.

Right idea, wrong place. That’s the bottom line here. There are some powerful ancillary arguments in the arena’s favor, primarily that it would throw a lifeline to both the Sahara and Riviera (provided they can hang in there until 2013 or so). Heck, even Circus Circus could use some assistance right now. Yes, Las Vegas needs a state-of-the-art sports facility, preferably one that could host our Triple-A baseball team and, yes, maybe the Thomas & Mack Arena is too far off-Strip for shindigs like the National Finals Rodeo. But sticking a stadium at any of the Strip’s three main “choke points” is nuts. If this is going to be done, it needs to happen somewhere near I-15 and with more “elbow room.”