[tijlover]

Originally Posted by Hackopotamus

Better and better in THEIR opinion. What they think is better is not necessarily better for others.

I'm no fan of Vegas and I think the city has a lot of issues but that's why I left. I'm not one to join a club then start telling everyone how to make it better.

There are a lot of very enterprising people in Vegas and I'd think that if an art museum is a money maker someone would build one. I don't think many residents care about an art museum. They can travel to LA to see one.

The problem for light rail in Vegas is the same for many places out west, it is a big sprawl so residences and work places won't be close enough to train stations. Sure, you can drive to the station closest to your house but what happens when your work is a couple miles from the closest station? Are you going to walk it when it is 115 degrees out? The cost/benefit just isn't there.

An art museum isn't even designed to make a profit! It's funded by wealthy donors! Las Vegas has a whole team of wealthy donors to keep an art museum alive, those rich people who moved there to escape paying state income taxes, like that wealthy Wal-Mart heir living in Henderson. Now there's someone who could cut a check for $5M to get construction going on it and not miss it at the end of the year.

Here, in Tucson, some wealthy donor, with a huge art collection, is spending One Billion, so I heard, on a new wing of the Tucson art museum. I was down there just a couple weeks ago, it's a big construction mess right now. And there's a lot more wealthy people in Las Vegas to fully fund a world-class art museum and subsidize its operation.

In one of the last legislation sessions, before I left last year, Tick Segerblom embarrassed the Assembly members by noting that Las Vegas was the last big city in the country to get an art museum, so they approved $10 million in seed money for it, and when it reached the desk of RINO governor Sandoval, he cut it down to just $1 million.

For light rail, it makes no difference if the city is spread out, as development will occur at the rail stops. You can view that kind of development at the L.A. rail stops and in Portland and other cities. When they built the rail line from Minneapolis to St. Paul, they were building apartment buildings even before the trains began to operate. Same would happen in Las Vegas.

[tijlover]

Originally Posted by timothyaw

A grocery store is needed downtown, where there are more residences.

I lived in a condo loft in downtown Minneapolis for 5 years, and despite all the high rises and mid rises that followed my departure in 1993, a grocery store didn't come to the downtown area until 2006, a Whole Foods, and later a Target store. I bought into it, enjoy the urban renaissance. Yup! And I still had to own a car to go 3 miles to a grocery store!

A grocery store ain't comin to downtown Las Vegas for ? years, despite more housing development. They've been building lots of new apartment buildings in downtown Tucson, and? No grocery store. Developers seem to think the residents eat breakfast, lunch and dinner at the local restaurants.

[tijlover]

Originally Posted by Hackopotamus

Yes, Vegas can do better and I think they are making improvements here and there.


Why didn't the monorail start at the airport to connect to the casinos? That is a good question. I have no idea why.

Obviously, you haven't lived in Las Vegas very long, I lived there for 22 years before leaving last year. Good question? No, very, very easy question to answer: 9-10,000 taxi drivers in Las Vegas. I heard it too often, the taxi drivers wouldn't allow it to go to the Airport from MGM, as that's one of their biggest slices of butter.

When the Monorail was finally opened, they were having problems, like wheels falling off mysteriously. I knew a retired cab driver, at the time, and he said there was no mystery at all, the taxi drivers were sabotaging it.

[Cold Warrior]

Originally Posted by ddrhazy

"This park is open to the public for all to use."

Could have fooled me with a fence surrounding the ENTIRE PARK.

Yes, you are fooled. There is a GATE near the street that is ALWAYS UNLOCKED during park hours. Everyone who has been there knows this. You, of course, are just posting pictures of places to which you have never been.

[Cold Warrior]

Originally Posted by ddrhazy

This analysis is for you since you're in Southern Highlands.

First a stroad to nowhere. No shops, just miles and miles of oversized roads to oversized houses.



Till you reach your overpriced McMansion where not another human soul will be seen walking around. Just get in your car and drive to work!

I bet that manicured front lawn for this property is making all of the 3 neighbors in this cul-du-sac jealous AF!

Envy is not an attractive personality trait.

[Cold Warrior]

Originally Posted by ddrhazy

Yup. It is being built. And there is nothing I can do to stop it. Just don't be fooled that it is some awesome place. The mere fact that businesses are buying parcels around the stadium for top dollar when the anatomy of the area is a mess shows that people have NO CLUE on city planning/building.

All those successful people that have NO CLUE. And all the money they will make and you won't.

[equid0x]

Originally Posted by ddrhazy

Although it's very hard to find examples of good street layout in Vegas suburbs, there are some places better than others. For example even though the roads around Spring Valley are still wide in some areas, they are not terrible everywhere.



Head a little further west where Peace terminates at the 215 and things get ridiculous though. We have a stroad that is so wide you could fit 8 cars side by side without too much trouble, for an area that probably doesn't get more than 200 cars per hour during rush hour.



And once the streets are built like this, there's really no going back. That's a cost that the city/county has to deal with forever. That's more maintenance for paving the streets and dealing with leaky pipes and electrical lines. You could fast forward 500 years and probably this area of Vegas will still be at this density. I can only imagine that the plan for this part of town was rubber stamped by some old school engineer who is just in his office all day and never tried to imagine how people would would actually move around this area.

There are no real city plans in the Vegas Valley. Its all about who greases the wheels of the county commission.

If you can grease it, you can build it.

If the county had a plan they'd be moving the airport out to Ivanpah already, building that light rail down the middle of LV Blvd, and making plans for parking garages to turn some dough on the new Raiders stadium but is that happening?

NOPE

[tijlover]

I do have to give Las Vegas some breaks! It's still a very young city, just passing through its teenage years and its adult years will be a lot different, higher taxes for sure, and the type of people who move there will be a lot different, perhaps no seniors? Try to imagine what Las Vegas will be like as a fully mature adult? I'll bet many of the posters here can't stretch their imaginations that far, but I can. And if it becomes more adult like I might even be tempted to move back, but there had better be a train waiting for me at the Airport to take me downtown, and to the museum.

Tucson goes back to the mid-to-late 1800's, so at this point in its history, you shouldn't be surprised at all to have a world class art museum, a light rail line and crumbling streets, even though the metro population here is one half of Las Vegas.

I do so pray an art museum comes along sooner, rather than later. I all but wept when I was at the Getty in L.A., a couple years ago, seeing all those buses in the parking lot, with schoolchildren lining up to take the tram to the top of the hill to the museum, with their teachers to give them an education on art. Tearfully, the schoolchildren in this city don't have that option. Shame! Shame! To put a white elephant sports stadium ahead of an art museum. Maybe I'll start praying that this white elephant becomes such a white elephant it stands empty, and it's turned into an art museum.

[Cold Warrior]

Maybe I'll start praying that this white elephant becomes such a white elephant it stands empty, and it's turned into an art museum.

Your most realistic plan yet!

[kttam186290]

Originally Posted by equid0x

There are no real city plans in the Vegas Valley. Its all about who greases the wheels of the county commission.

If you can grease it, you can build it.

If the county had a plan they'd be moving the airport out to Ivanpah already, building that light rail down the middle of LV Blvd, and making plans for parking garages to turn some dough on the new Raiders stadium but is that happening?

NOPE

And if you attend the right church (hint-hint) you'll know where to get the grease!