By Alan Snel, LVSportsBiz.com Publisher-Writer
The controversial Formula 1 race in Las Vegas was conceived in a confidential letter of intent between LVCVA chief Steve Hill and Las Vegas Grand Prix head Renee Wilm in March 2022, with F1 eventually misleading Ellis Island hotel-casino on everything from racetrack construction to road closures to access to businesses, according to a lawsuit filed by Ellis Island’s lawyers.
The lawsuit filed by the Las Vegas firm of Kemp Jones April 30 asks for relief of more than $15,000 for the financial losses on several legal fronts suffered by Ellis Island at 4250 Koval Lane, just east of Las Vegas Boulevard in the Strip entertainment corridor.
In a statement to LVSportsBiz.com, Ellis Island lawyer J. Randall Jones said Tuesday, “Ellis Island’s damages to date are already in the millions of dollars. And as you know, F1 is planning on holding its race every year for the next nine years which will continue to cause Ellis Island significant economic losses in the future.”
For months, LVSportsBiz.com has reported that Clark County commissioners and government were over their head and out of their league in reviewing and evaluating the Las Vegas Grand Prix race event November 16-18. It was clear: Clark County was clueless about what it was getting itself into. Take a look at the lawsuit:
Ellis Island Lawsuit Case A-24-892316B Filed 4_30_24
The Ellis Island lawsuit validates the LVSportsBiz.com analysis that F1, combined with the LVCVA public tourism agency backing, was allowed to move forward by Clark County with its 3.8-mile racetrack, road closures and closed access to public right-of-ways and businesses without Clark County receiving any compensation.
It’s remarkable that a local government handed over so much public resources like the Strip and neighboring roads to a race promoter without requiring the event organizer to pay millions of dollars in return.
Many businesses were financially hurt by the F1 road race, while the big hotel properties reported they made more money than usual for that race weekend in mid-November.
One of those businesses that allege that it was financially hurt was Ellis Island, owned by Gary Ellis.
The hotel-casino was among more than a dozen businesses, including some near the Koval Lane-Flamingo Road intersection, that said they lost millions of dollars in revenues because the race course’s barriers, fencing and light mounts limited access for customers to go to their businesses. They want to be compensated for their losses and some business owners have met with Hill and Wilm, but no reimbursements have been made.
The lawsuit goes into detail about how, “Between June and September 2023, F1 and its agents inconsistently timed their road paving schedules, leading to road closures on a daily basis with no notice to Plaintiffs. 69. Plaintiffs were forced to pay for road flaggers to work between 12 and 14 hours a
day to minimize (if not prevent) the resulting traffic build-up from blocking entrances to Ellis Island.”
F1 Las Vegas Grand Prix relied on consultant Terry Miller on traffic and road closure plans.
The Ellis Island lawsuit alleged, ” ‘On September 12, 2023, Miller emailed Plaintiffs to make them aware of LV Paving’s road-work schedule from Sunday night (September 17) through Thursday mid-day
(September 21). Miller represented that “[t]he entrances/exits for Ellis Island will not be impacted during construction.’ This representation turned out to be false.”
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The lawsuit also says Clark County “unlawfully deems F1 a ‘Special Event,’ without requiring that F1 obtain the issuance of a special event permit.”
Formula 1 and Clark County representatives said there will be no comment on the lawsuit.
The lawsuit criticized Clark County on several fronts, but also cited examples where County Commissioners Marilyn Kirkpatrick and Jim Gibson themselves expressed frustration with the limited and misleading road traffic information provided by F1 Las Vegas.
F1 submitted a draft traffic report for the 2024 event to Clark County May 1.
The county, however, refused to make the draft traffic report available after a public records request by LVSportsBiz.com.
It is typical and required of local governments to make submitted public documents accessible to the public.
But not in Clark County.
The F1 race issue is scheduled to be back on the Clark County Commission agenda Tuesday when the grand prix has some business licensing issues for its plaza at the paddock off Harmon and Koval.
F1 does not have its county permits in place, but the race promoter has been moving ahead with marketing ticket packages for the Nov. 21-23 event.
Publisher’s Note: This statement will be read into the record at Tuesday’s Clark County Commission meeting during the public comment period.
Good morning.
My name is Alan Snel and I publish LVSportsBiz.com, a news website that covers the convergence of sports, politics, business, stadiums, sponsorships and the topic of “public-private partnerships.”
I have reported on this news subject for the Denver Post in Denver, the Sun-Sentinel in South Florida, the former Post-Intelligencer in Seattle, in New York where I launched FOXSportsBiz.com that covered the subject nationally and the former Tampa Tribune in the Tampa Bay market before coming to Las Vegas to cover the beat for the local newspaper in 2012 until 2016.
I launched LVSportsBiz.com in June 2017 and in only three weeks we celebrate our news site’s seventh anniversary.
In my more than 25 years of covering this news topic, I routinely report stories on draft studies and reports. It’s actually quite typical. And in reporting for newspapers across the country, I have found that local governments routinely provide draft reports because they are public records.
But as I have discovered here in Clark County and the Las Vegas market, things are done just a little differently.
On May 1, a county applicant by the name of the Las Vegas Grand Prix submitted a traffic report and it, therefore, became a public record. LVSportsBiz.com, like I have done countless times across the country, requested a copy of this traffic report.
But Clark County government refused to make this public document public.
It described the report as a “draft” and used that as an excuse to deny public access to the grand rpix traffic report.
I am here to ask each and every one of you to make public a traffic report that is of immense interest to the public that, in theory, you serve.
The traffic report is very newsworthy because we here in Clark County were able to experience the body of work exhibited by the applicant regarding a car race event it staged on public county roads only a year ago.
This event caused the biggest disruption to commerce, business and transportation not just in the history of Clark County and Las Vegas but in the history of Nevada. That’s not a journalist’s opinion. That’s a direct on-the-record quote from none other than the chairman of the Clark County Commission, Tick Segerblom.
Clark County government, however, is denying the public a chance to inspect a public record that would show the starting point of a traffic study related to an event that is of immense public interest. Your county manager referred to the disruptions to business and transportation as euphemistically, “challenges.”
But the open records law does not distinguish between an event that caused the most disruptions in Las Vegas history and one that poses, “challenges.”
This pubic traffic report — one that your government has chosen to describe as “draft” — needs to be made public so that Clark County and the people effected by this road race understand the traffic starting point for an event that caused more impacts than any other event in Las Vegas history.
Making a public record public should not be such a big challenge for Clark County.