Old J.C. Penney's Building gets Rehabbed!

When I was a kid, J.C. Penney's was located at Sixth and Fremont.  Fremont Street back in the early 1960s was filled not only with casinos like the Golden Nugget, the Mint and the Horseshoe but also retail businesses like Penney's, Sears, Ronzoni's and Chic Hecht's.  But that all started to change a few years later when the Boulevard Mall opened.  Sears anchored one corner of the mall and Penney's and Ronzoni's anchored the middle of the Mall with the Broadway on the south-end.  Residents responded by making the Boulevard Mall a rousing success.  Everthing from high-end clothing to Woolworth's to candle shops, head shops and restaurants could be found at the Mall.  We no longer needed to go downtown to do our shopping.  The retail businesses began pulling out of Fremont Street.

The J.C. Penney's became the Fremont Medical Building.  The handicapped entrance was where the old catalog department once was.  But over time as Fremont Street continued to change, the Fremont Medical Building went empty.

Well, it is getting a new lease on life, it seems as an Arts Collective.

From our friend Kristen Peterson now at the Las Vegas Weekly:

David Curtis stands in the doorway of the Fremont Medical Center, soliciting signatures to put him on the ballot for the gubernatorial race. His bicycle is parked outside. His satchel hangs from his shoulder, and his jacket is tagged with a Green Party button.

Artists stream in and out. They're here for the open house for Emergency Arts, a creative collective that will move into the old medical building at Sixth and Fremont, across from the El Cortez and Beauty Bar. They listen to Curtis' brief pitch and sign the paper with their free hand. In the other: a copy of the building's layout, a price list and the mission statement for Emergency Arts. The artists survey tiny exam rooms, nursing stations and X-ray areas, still showing medical residue — signs, surgical lubricant, hospital-room curtains. If everything goes according to plan, these rooms will soon be studios, boutiques and offices.

Creative types plan to take over the space in March, working amid the medical-center theme. That includes Curtis, who intends to run his campaign from the building, and artist Simone Turner, who plans to have a teaching studio.

"It's an exciting building. It has history to it," Turner says.

She knows its history firsthand, having been stitched up there after splitting her lip at a punk show at Calamity Jayne's back in the '80s. The building's condition — water stains on ceilings, busted walls, stained toilets — makes it hard to imagine getting an exam there, but there are plans to have it cleaned up by March.

Turner isn't bothered by the lack of windows in the rooms off the back corridors: "I can put in the lighting I want."

Michael Cornthwaite, owner of the Downtown Cocktail Room, and Jennifer Harrington, owner of the just-closed Henri & Odette Gallery, are leasing the center and managing the multiuse space as a way to rejuvenate the struggling arts scene and add more diversity to the Downtown entertainment district. That it's not in the neighboring arts district has generated chatter, but not enough to curb interest in the project. Its January 14 open house created a lot of traffic. Eleven of the several-dozen people who turned out signed letters of intent to lease, Harrington says. Others still are considering.

Rents range from $200 to $1,500 per month, plus common-area fees. The informational packet informs "ideal tenants" that they need to be able to "see the vision of this project, and the collective benefits from being involved. If we have to convince you, this project is not for you."

Harrington wants a café in the entry area that serves catered food, and a coffee counter. She and Cornthwaite are reaching out to filmmakers and start-up nonprofits.

"It's great," says artist and Downtown resident Justin Favela, who wants to lease a studio space this summer. "It's so funny. It's like a hospital for art — trying to keep the art alive in Las Vegas. And you can work in here and drink across the street."

Dr. Michael Green and Las Vegas History!

One of my favorite people is Dr. Michael Green.  He teaches history at the College of Southern Nevada, he's a familiar face to my Untold Stories class, is one of my go-to guys when I need a historic question answered and is just a terrific guy.

He is also our inaugural guest for a new feature here at Classic Las Vegas.  I will be interviewing various history and cultural gurus in Las Vegas right here.

Dr. Mike was kind enough to help me kick this new feature off.

So, without further ado here's Dr. Mike:

1)  Why do you enjoy teaching Las Vegas history?

Besides teaching Las Vegas history—and general surveys—I specialize in the Civil War era.  I would love to interview Lincoln or someone who knew him fairly well, but that doesn’t seem possible.  But in Las Vegas, the people who made the history are here or one generation removed, and that adds an excitement and interest level for me and, I think, for others. 

Also, to refer to my example, while there remains a great deal we do not know about the Civil War era, we know a lot.  I always find it more interesting to study something not very well known to try to learn more about it, and so much of Las Vegas’s history is uncharted territory.  Also, it is right here, waiting for us.  I like to think of myself as being a public servant, and I think we serve the public when we do research on our community’s history.

2)  Which part of Las Vegas history do you think needs more of the spotlight?

Ha!  Just about all of it!  Even the Strip, which gets so much attention—how much do we know about the business operations and the entertainment history?  We need to know a lot more about what went on here in the community at all times, and especially before the dam.  There have been some good studies of the broader Las Vegas community, but we need a lot more specialized work on everything from women to religion.

3)  Which is your favorite era of Las Vegas history and why?

If you asked me another day, my answer would be different.  To turn it around, I would find it fascinating to have been here when the Stewarts and Kiels were about the only ones around in the late nineteenth century and see just what was really going on.  But I incline toward the 1950s:  interesting people with interesting backgrounds, the Strip and downtown expanding, growth fast but reasonable, political change, incredible entertainment, and a civil rights movement really ramping up.

4)  What is the significance of Las Vegas before WWII and in the post-war era?

Do you have a year for me to answer?  Before World War II, Las Vegas wasn’t terribly significant.  It was a pit stop and a small tourist town between Los Angeles and Salt Lake, dependent on the railroad first for jobs in its repair shops and then, when the railroad moved the shops, on tourists coming through on the train or via the old highway.  Not that that era isn’t worthy and in need of further study, but Las Vegas didn’t matter yet on a regional and national—even international—scale in the way that it would and does.  I think the era is incredibly valuable for us to examine for harbingers of what was to come, locally and nationally.

As for the postwar era, in 1994, Time proclaimed Las Vegas “the all-American city.”  At about the same time, Marc Cooper did a great piece in The Village Voice about how Las Vegas operated, and it was far less, shall we say, glamorous than Time’s version. 

I think that Las Vegas is in some ways symbolic of postwar America:  a greater movement toward leisure and instant gratification, thanks partly to social changes (suburbanization, different mores and morals) and partly to inventions that make them possible (computers and jet airplanes).  Las Vegas also is a fascinating way to look at the evolution of entertainment:  showrooms used to resemble the Ed Sullivan show, which resembled vaudeville. 

Now, with shorter attention spans, we have one-person shows with lots of bells and whistles or Cirque shows that are not in themselves star vehicles but sometimes are related to stars and/or use those bells and whistles.

5)  What are your thoughts on the "Casino" the movie and myth vs. reality?

Let’s start with the point that “Casino” is a marvelous film, as film.  It also does a very good job of conveying its time or milieu.  Martin Scorsese and Nicholas Pileggi captured the aura of the time.  The problem is that it’s terrible history. 

For storytelling purposes, they combined several politicians into one, made Ace Rothstein look far abler than Lefty Rosenthal actually was (understandable when you have Robert DeNiro in the lead role), and attached far more significance to the affair between Joe Pesci’s and Sharon Stone’s characters than it actually had. 

The reality is that the mob’s fall here had a lot more to do with federal and state investigations, which don’t transfer well to the screen, and Rosenthal’s incredible arrogance, best displayed in his confrontation with then-Gaming Commission chairman Harry Reid and his abominable television show.

6)  Is the "Green Felt Jungle" a good book on the mob if so, why or why not?

My answer is yes and no.  As with most books in that genre, Ed Reid and Ovid DeMaris have a lot of good information but are more interested in heat than in light.  Also, a significant amount of the book is stuff that Reid reported in the Las Vegas Sun nearly a decade before—the Thunderbird case.  But it has a lot of useful, interesting information, and it’s certainly a good read.

Thank you Dr. Mike!

Liberace Museum moving to the Strip

For years the Liberace Museum has been near UNLV and Tivoli Gardens, the restaurant that Lee owned.  But, in these struggling times, the museum is moving on up to the Strip in an effort to get more foot traffic through the door.

Liberace and his brother, George at the Museum in 1979

From our pal, Johnny Kats:

The Liberace Museum's days on the corner of East Tropicana Avenue at Spencer are numbered.

We'll put that number at over/under 400 1/2. As always, for entertainment purposes only.

New Liberace Foundation & Museum President Jack Rappaport, a member of the Liberace Foundation Board of Directors since 2006, said today the Foundation is in discussions with an entity on the Strip to relocate the Liberace Museum (and my man Ubiquitous Robin Leach tweeted this earlier today, so right on).

The Liberace Museum has stored and displayed Liberace's costumes, footwear, jewelry, photos, vehicles, pianos, photos, and even bedroom sets in two buildings at 1775 East Tropicana since April 15, 1979. Rappaport says it could be as soon as Thanksgiving or as long as the latter half of 2011 that the museum is fully relocated to a high-density area on the Strip.

"This is not the best spot for us. This is not where we should be," Rappaport, who has taken over the position vacated by Darin Hollingsworth soon after the museum celebrated its 30th anniversary in April, said during a phone conversation this afternoon. The reason the museum is in a bad location — even if that location was decided on by Liberace himself — is because tourists are not interested in moving so far off the Strip to visit the museum. At its peak, the Liberace museum attracted a quarter of a million visitors annually; that number dropped to about 50,000 by the time the 30th anniversary rolled around.

"Liberace wanted to appeal to locals because he was so heavily involved in the community, and here was a time when we had 10, 12 tour busses stop here, but that's no longer the case," Rappaport said. "We're not getting the tourist traffic we used to from the Strip. It used to be tourists would gamble and lie in the sun on the Strip and not do much else, so they would see the museum. But then the Strip, over years, became an attraction unto itself, and we stopped getting so many visitors."

Interns from the UNLV School of Architecture are in the process of drafting plans for the 20,000-square-foot project, which is about what the two museum buildings occupy now. Rappaport says there will be a more intelligent use of space in the new ... space. There will be a plan for an expanded showroom, larger than the cabaret theater at the current museum.

"It is a work in progress, keep that in mind," Rappaport said. "But it will be located in an area where a lot of tourists will already be visiting, and locals will still have a chance to visit the museum … this is long overdue, actually."

What would further inflate visitor numbers is a feature film about Liberace starring Michael Douglas in the lead role, and Matt Damon portraying the pianist's longtime lover Scott Thorsen. I say this because People magazine's Web site reported back in September that Douglas and Damon would star in a film about Liberace, with director Stephen Soderbergh confirming their involvement in the film. Since, Rappaport has sent letters to Soderbergh and United Artists CEO Jerry Weintraub offering to assist with wardrobe, memorabilia, those types of contributions, when the film reportedly starts shooting this spring. He hasn't heard back. No worries, though.

"We've been looking at museums across the country for design ideas, but we're so different," Rappaport said. "We're labeled a museum, but we're more than that. We're an experience." And one that more past and future fans of Liberace should, in fact, experience.

Random Thoughts and Things That Irritate Me

Just some things that irritate me,  make me wonder and really make me mad.  Hey, it's my birthday.  I should get to blog about personal stuff every now and then.

1.  The NBC Late-Night Fiasco.  I know there are folks on Team Conan and folks on Team Leno.  But guess what?   There are no people on Team Zucker and that’s the way it should be. 

 Jeff Zucker, the one-time boy genius who was going to make NBC #1 forever and ever, instead, made one of the worst decisions in network history.  Now Zucker is blaming Conan for not delivering a higher audience for the Tonight Show and blaming Jay for not delivering a higher audience for the Jay Leno show.  

Despite the fact, that he, Jeff Zucker, was the architect of this entire fiasco. 

In the old days of corporate America when you screwed up on a scale this grand, you did the right thing by taking the blame and stepping down immediately.  Not Jeff Zucker, he really wants to be the poster boy for everything that we hate about Corporate America today.  That is, instead of admitting your mistakes and taking your punishment, you instead blame the victims and ask all of America to ignore your hand in designing this fiasco and ask that we all just pretend you’re not to blame.  Sorry, Jeff Zucker, there’s a reason the only person on Team Zucker is you.

2.  Post-Apocalyptic Movies.   They come around every few years.  Anyone remember “The Postman” with Kevin Costner?  Earlier this winter we had “The Road” with the wonderful Viggo Mortensen and based on the acclaimed novel by Cormac McCarthy.  Didn’t do well at the box office.  I’m thinking when it comes to post-apocalyptic movies, movie goers want someone forceful, charming and who offers hope.  Kevin Costner in “Postman” not so much, Denzel Washington in “The Book of Eli”, hell yeah!

3.  Mel Gibson in “Edge of Darkness”.    With all the problems Mel has had with his fans and his personal life the last few years, is this really the time in his career to start channeling Jack Nicholson?  Doesn’t he realize that Jack is still alive and can probably kick his ass for stealing his act?

4.  Smokey Robinson.  Who knew that Smokey was Wayne Newton’s half-brother?  I didn’t .   Did you?  Well, have you seen Smokey lately?  I saw him the other night on an American Masters documentary on Sam Cooke and my jaw dropped to the floor.  There was Smokey, our Smokey, looking like he had gone to Wayne Newton’s plastic surgeon and was proud of it!

 All I could do was hang my head in despair.  Has looking youthful in America sunk so low that someone like Smokey has to chase the fountain of youth to be taken seriously?  For God’s sake, he’s Smokey Robinson!!!!  That should be enough to let him grow old gracefully and still love him!

5.  The Las Vegas Sun.  I read the paper every day on-line.  When I click on News it takes me to a new page where it previews the big Las Vegas news story of the day and has one or two other line items for other news stories.  Underneath it says, More Las Vegas News.  I click on that thinking it will take me to more news stories about what is happening around Las Vegas. 

Instead, it takes me to the weather articles.  Rain in the forecast, not so much.  In the winter, reports of a cooling or cold trend, in the summer, reports of the heat.  I don’t really want to know the weather.  I want to know the More Las Vegas News stories.  Why doesn’t the Sun have a separate weather page?  Or do they really think the weather in Las Vegas changes enough to warrant being the end page for More Las Vegas News?

6. Sheldon Adelson.  He built a new casino in Bethlehem, PA on the grounds of the old US Steel plant.  As part of the deal with the city, he also funded a museum detailing the history of Bethlehem and the importance of US Steel to the community. 

Years before, Shel Adelson built a casino/hotel in Las Vegas called “The Venetian”.  It was built on the site of the famed and beloved Sands Hotel.  We didn’t get a museum detailing the history of Las Vegas or the importance of the Sands Hotel.  The Sands was home to the Rat Pack.  The Sands was one of the first hotels to break the color barrier.  The Sands was the hotel we think of when we think of Classic Las Vegas.  We got squat for all that history.  Thanks, Shel.

7. Cell Phones.  If you are shopping in Trader Joe’s, do you really need to be talking on your cell phone?  Do you really think the rest of us care about your conversation, that we care about who is picking up the kids, what’s for dinner, what your plans of the evening are?  News Flash!  We don’t. Trader Joe’s are not large stores.   If your call is that freakin’ important take it outside and let the rest of us shop in peace.  Because you standing in the middle of the aisle talking away while you and your cart block the rest of us from shopping is only making us hate you more.

8. Trying to park your car while talking on your cell-phone?  Please get off the phone!  Now!

9. The El Cortez.  With all the focus on rehabilitating Downtown, will someone, besides us, please acknowledge that the crew behind the El Cortez ROCKS!  Jackie passed his legacy to a group that understands his legacy.  Thank-You!!!!

10, Endangered Buildings.  As the economy starts to rebound more and more buildings and homes will become endangered:

•  Flora Dungan Humanities Building designed by Zick and Sharp.  One of the last original campus buildings yet, UNLV higher ups want it gone.

• Valley High School- an impeding update will destroy much of the original Zick and Sharp original architecture.

• City Hall, another Zick and Sharp late mid-century modern architecture.  Mayor Goodman wants a new City Hall closer to the Smith Center.  If the that happens, the current building will be torn down to make room for a new casino/hotel.

• East Fremont Motel Auto Courts.  One of the largest and last standing groups of motor auto courts still in existence.  Not to mention the wonderful neon signage still standing.  All are endangered.

• The Las Vegas High School Historical Neighborhood.  Despite being on the Historical Registry of Historical Places, this neighborhood still does not have City Preservation Protection.  Thus, many of the homes that date back to the 1920s-1930s are being torn down and in there place are rising McMansions.  This is our best example of a Historic District and we are letting it go to waste.