WHAT HAPPENED IN VEGAS: THE NIGHT WE BECAME A GHOST TOWN
 

By Howard T. Brody

Usually this column focuses on the people and events from our city’s rich and famous, if not infamous history that helped to establish and shape the place we’ve become. In this issue, however, we reach back only a handful of months to an event that has impacted our city profoundly and, for better or worse, might be shaping and designing our future.

At 12:01 a.m. on Wednesday, March 18, 2020, for the first time since November 25, 1963, the date of John F. Kennedy’s funeral, the process of shutting down the world-famous Las Vegas Strip began.

Twelve hours later, not only were the lights dimmed or shut off entirely in hotels and casinos up and down the Strip, but the dancing fountains at the Bellagio were shut off, and both the automotive and foot traffic along the Strip became non-existent. Sometimes, unless you have a timepiece, if you weren’t paying attention to whether it was light or dark out, you couldn’t tell if it was noon or midnight along the Strip because of the bumper-to-bumper traffic and the horde of people walking from one property to another. Sadly, on that Wednesday and for the many days that followed, noon along the Strip looked more like midnight in any rural town in America as there was nary a soul in sight.

Unfortunately, the Strip wasn’t the only place in town to be impacted. All of the properties just off the Strip like the Palms and Rio Las Vegas were closed, as were all of the hotels and casinos along Boulder Highway like Sam’s Town and Boulder Station. Outlying properties such as South Point, The M, Green Valley Ranch and Red Rock Resort were shuttered too, as were all of the hotels and casinos in the downtown area, including those under the 12-million light bulb canopy of the Fremont Street Experience like The Plaza and the Golden Nugget.

By the time rush hour rolled around Wednesday morning, some seven to eight hours after the shutdown, traffic on the usually heavily congested I-15 as well as travel on I-11 and both I-215 and I-515 seemed more like what one would expect during pre-church Sunday morning than a bustling city’s busiest time of the day.

Yes, the once small desert town that over the years picked up the well-earned the nicknames of “Sin City,” “the Entertainment Capital of the World” and the “City of Lights” . . .  the small town that grew to a population of more than 2 million, which is the brightest city on Earth as seen from space, went dark.

Like some apocalyptic science fiction movie, virtually overnight, Las Vegas turned into a ghost town, not too different than it did back in ‘63, except, unlike the events that honored the assassinated 35th POTUS, this time around, Vegas didn’t just close for a day, it stayed closed for months, a very real nightmare for tens of thousands of hotel and casino workers, and hundreds of thousands of residents all across the Valley who were impacted.

Following state of emergency announcements and stay at home orders in New York and San Francisco, the odyssey for Vegas started on the afternoon of March 17, 2020. Nevada Governor Steve Sisolak held a news conference at the Sawyer State Building in Las Vegas and issued an executive order for all of the slot machines in Nevada to be turned off at midnight, with the state’s casinos and non-essential businesses to be shuttered at noon on the 18th. The measure was only supposed be temporary; 30 days at most, all in an attempt to stem the spread of the coronavirus (COVID-19). Well, we all know how that turned out.

The Strip didn’t start to reopen for business until June 4, nearly three months after it had been shuttered, and even then, it was slow and methodical resistance. The Mirage, one of the most popular and well-known properties on the Strip, didn’t reopen its doors until August 27th, some five months after the lights went out. As we go to press (September 20, 2020), ten hotel and casinos still remain closed. They are Fiesta Rancho, Fiesta Henderson, the Palms and Texas Station (owned by Red Rock Station Casinos), Eldorado Casino, Eastside Cannery and Main Street Station (owned by Boyd Gaming) and The Cromwell, Planet Hollywood and Rio Las Vegas (owned by Caesars Entertainment).

Politics started to play a role in the city reopening too, as those who pushed to reopen the properties felt the pushback of those who didn’t. Democratic governor Sisolak following the lead of California governor Gavin Newsom and taking away the citizen’s civil rights, ordered a statewide mask order and even shutdown rural parts of the state that had no deaths and only a few Covid-19 cases.

Although Las Vegas has opened back up, like most major cities, we are still not at full capacity, and the coronavirus continues to take its toll on us. None of the stage shows have opened back up, strip clubs and brothels remain closed, and bars that don’t serve food, which had been reopened, were shuttered for a second time. The city’s newest residents, the Las Vegas Raiders of the NFL, are about to play their first game in the $1.8B Allegiant Stadium to no fans. In addition to the vast number of individuals affected by the virus, many businesses became fatalities due to COVID-19. According to Yelp, 60% of the business closures in Las Vegas that were due to the coronavirus pandemic are now permanent.

If nothing else, we know that Las Vegas has proven to be a resilient city through the years despite hotel fires, Earthquakes, gangland murders, and the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history.

While we usually try to make light of the What Happens in Vegas slogan, we can indeed say this time around that What Happened in Vegas stayed in Vegas, and for the most part, it really sucked!

But, Las Vegas will be back to its former glory. It’ll take a while, but the glitz, glamour and sexiness of what Sin City has always been will return.