F1’s Las Vegas Grand Prix event next week: Epic event? Or epic disaster?
Las Vegas Grand Prix and LVCVA representatives came to the Clark County Commission meeting Tuesday to answer logistical questions like how hotel workers will get to their jobs when the Strip corridor is basically a closed track for the 3.8-mile race.
Commissioner Marilyn Kirkpatrick, based on the tone of her questions and body language, did not seem too impressed with a logistical game plan. The event is set for Thursday to Saturday, with the race happening Saturday night.
“We got to suck it up and make it work,” Kirkpatrick said.
Terry Miller, the race’s traffic guy as grand prix project manager and supreme master of the understatement, explained to Clark County’s seven-member governing board that things will be “constrained.”
To further put the commissioner’s concerns at rest, one of the grand prix presenters told the elected officials that fans should “bring only what you need” to the Las Vegas Grand Prix.
With insightful advice like this, what could possibly go wrong when rich Formula One race visitors from around the world descend on the Las Vegas Strip to “maximize economic impact,” as one presenter said.
The race has divided Las Vegas.
The closed roads, repaving, barrier/fencing installation and grandstand construction on public roads and sidewalks along the 3.8-mile track route has caused intense traffic jams and major inconveniences where some visitors to the Strip were seen leaving sidewalks and trying to get around by walking on the busy spine of entertainment and commerce.
The Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority (LVCVA) has repeated the manta that the rich visitors will spend lots of money and beef up the hotels’ banking accounts during a month that typically shows lower tourism numbers compared to the rest of the year.
But what are the matrix and criteria to analyze the net benefits when you consider many people will be avoiding the Strip and Las Vegas because they do not want to deal with the traffic, stress and aggravation of a race event? That’s a loss of revenues, while some businesses have complained they have lost income because of bad access to their stores in the race corridor. How are those economic losses factored into the equation?
If the race is so lucrative, why are hotels and businesses begging their workers to work grand prix weekend? In fact, there is the possibility of the largest hospitality worker strike in U.S. history if a new contract is not reached between Culinary Workers Union Local 226 and MGM Resorts, Caesars Entertainment and Wynn Resorts.
Kirkpatrick asked the grand prix presenters like Brian Yost of the LVCVA about how hotel workers will even reach a satellite parking lot at the Las Vegas Convention Center in the first place before they’re supposedly taking shuttles to their jobs up and down the Strip?
And she also asked what happens if a monorail car breaks down and cannot take some workers to their jobs.
Yost and Miller tried their best to reassure the commissioners that they have everything under control by showing them lots of slides.
The F1 Las Vegas Grand Prix has not engaged well with Las Vegas locals, many of whom are priced out by the expensive race tickets.
Unfortunately for locals who oppose the public dollars spent on the grand prix, the F1 folks will be here for the next nine years under a 10-year agreement with Clark County.
Clark County Commission Chairman Jim Gibson ended the chat with the race people with these words, “We will see you on the other side.”
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