LAS VEGAS (KLAS) — What goes up must come down. But, in the world that is F1, that potentially means leaving some of its world-class racetrack standing year-round.
The lights, grandstands, pedestrian bridge screens, and track barriers that are now towering over Las Vegas Boulevard (and sometimes blocking iconic Strip views) will come down starting “the day after the race,” Las Vegas Grand Prix (LVGP) Project Manager Terry Miller told Clark County Commissioners in early October.
However, neither he nor the racing giant has yet to reveal an official takedown timeline that took roughly half a year to build up.
Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority (LVCVA) President and CEO Steve Hill revealed Tuesday that it will likely take six to eight weeks to transform the now 3.8-mile world-class race track back to the memorable Las Vegas Strip.
“We have to do that in conjunction with all the other events and shows that are happening in that corridor,” Hill said to media after Tuesday morning’s LVCVA board meeting. “Amazon will be here with AWS immediately – they’ll start setting up immediately after the race, and we don’t want to disrupt them.”
The takedown will be complete with just months in between the next time crews will be tasked to build it back up again for the 2024 Grand Prix. Clark County commissioners, like Marilyn Kirkpatrick, have tasked LVGP with making that process less disruptive each year.
“I don’t want to do the bridges every single time. Maybe that’s something that you look at for permanent,” Kirkpatrick told Miller during an early October commissioner meeting.
Those conversations are ongoing now with LVCVA, F1, and Clark County, according to Hill. While much of the grandstands were built on land “too valuable” for long-term commitments, he points to the 750-foot-long vehicle bridge over Flamingo and Koval that he says has kept traffic flowing in and out of the strip since the 10-day install in October.
“The traffic’s better than it was before we started to build all of this. That bridge is a big part of that,” Hill said. “It makes a bunch of sense. It’s one of the things we’ve learned.”
It may be unlikely that the bridge will remain permanent after this year’s race. Miller said the takedown will begin in December and bring another 10 days of closures in the midst of New Year’s Eve preparations.
Original News Source Link – KLAS
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