Viva…Downtown Vegas?

Long blighted and lawless, Las Vegas’ city center is hot right now—thanks to a tech millionaire and a handful of local visionaries

- Mitch Moxley

In September 2013, Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh moved the company’s 1,600 employees into the former Las Vegas City Hall downtown, north of the Strip. The decision was symbolic of Hsieh’s wider ambition: to breathe life back into the city’s shattered central core. Hsieh, whose company was sold to Amazon in 2009 for $1.2 billion, invested $350 million in 2012 into a downtown revitalization venture—aptly called the Downtown Project—with funds allocated to real estate development, tech, arts, education, and loans to small businesses.

Today Hsieh, who has a net worth of about $780 million, lives in an Airstream in a trailer park he also owns, complete with two alpacas, in the middle of downtown. Around him, the area is slowly coming to life. After World War II, downtown Vegas was the place to be, with a bounty of vibrant hotels and casinos. Then, in 1989, Steve Wynn opened the first resort on the Strip and everything changed. Downtown became a virtual no-go zone; the once-charming motels were boarded up and abandoned, their vintage signage carted to the outskirts of town. (They now make up a museum commonly known as the Neon Boneyard.)