A group of local business owners is asking the government for help revitalizing their storefronts after they say what was supposed to be temporary construction for the first-ever Las Vegas Grand Prix F1 race, held almost two months ago, is still impacting their businesses to the tune of tens of millions of dollars.
aas F1 Team driver Nico Hulkenberg of Germany races down the strip across Flamingo Road during free ... [+]
About a dozen local business owners along the Grand Prix circuit sent letters this week to the Clark County Commission and the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority asking for "some kind" of financial remedy to avoid a "class action lawsuit" over what they've called devastating changes to roadways that have impeded access to their businesses.
At a public meeting this week, owners of storefronts ranging from gift shops to restaurants said construction closures that started months before the race and the instillation of a bridge on Flamingo Road, about two blocks off the Strip, caused $23 million in losses because longtime and potential new customers couldn’t reach their businesses.
Lisa Mayo-DeRiso, who is representing the local business owners in their fight, told Forbes the construction has “cut off all the street traffic that these local businesses relied on” and the bridge is still standing almost two months after the race as rumors swirl that leaders may make it permanent, which Mayo-DeRiso says would be a “death sentence.”
Randy Markin, owner of Battista's Hole in the Wall since 1970 and general manager of Stage Door Casino since 1976, told Forbes he’d never experienced a revenue loss until F1 came to town and now he estimates the two businesses are down a combined $4.5 million: “Every single night we’d have 100 to 200 cancellations with the same line, ‘I’m really sorry, but I can’t get down there.’”
Wade Bohn, who has owned the Jay's Market convenience store on Flamingo Road since 2006, said he had to lay off five employees in the race-caused sales slump and estimates he's down about $4.3 million in revenue—half of his 2022 revenue—because he went from selling 3 million gallons of gas per day to about 1.3 million; the bridge goes directly over and past Jay’s Market.
Clark County officials did not immediately respond to Forbes’ request for comment Friday and refused to speak to the Las Vegas Review-Journal, citing “the threat of pending litigation.”
Media requests submitted to F1 were not returned Friday morning.
Mayo-DeRiso said business owners are asking for two things: the removal of the temporary bridge by the time an estimated 450,000 people flock to the city for the Super Bowl on Feb. 11 and to be made whole. F1 promised the race would bring $1.3 billion in economic benefits to Clark County, and Mayo-DeRiso said the government should step in to make up for the losses incurred by local businesses in the Flamingo Road-Koval Lane-Harmon Avenue area. If nothing is done, she said the owners are considering a lawsuit.
The Las Vegas Grand Prix, which involved races on the Strip from Nov. 16-18, has been a source of controversy since the idea was confirmed in early 2022. The city signed a 10-year contract with F1 back in February of 2023. Ahead of the race, F1 removed trees and shut down the fountains in front of the Bellagio, drained the gondola canal at the Venetian and blocked sights of the Strip with fencing and scaffolding, moves University of Nevada, Las Vegas professor Michael Green told Fortune caused "a lot of uproar." Almost two months later, that uproar hasn’t died down, and Markin said locals are terrified of what’s to come in the time left on the F1 contract. “Nobody intentionally saw this coming, it was just bad decision making and it hurt everybody,” he said. “We don’t want to go down the lawsuit track, we just want them to step up and say ‘We made a mistake, let’s fix this for the next nine years that we have the race.” While construction for the race was at its peak, Markin and Mayo-DeRiso said locals were adding hours onto their commutes and tourists were all but shut out of any areas where work was ongoing. ”The traffic was so bad even taxis and car services would say, ‘Nope, I’m not going to that area,’” Markin said. Ferraro’s Ristorante, another local business that signed onto letters sent to officials this week, went from serving hundreds of customers for dinner per day to dozens because potential diners couldn’t reasonably make the two-mile journey from the Strip, Markin added.
“Every day that goes by, they’re still continuing to lose money, and if the bridge doesn’t come down, they won’t have any prayer of benefitting from Super Bowl traffic,” Mayo-DeRiso said. “And if they leave it up permanently, all of these businesses will go under. It is not the role of the government to decide who stays in business and who doesn't.”