The Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority (LVCVA) will acquire the financially troubled Las Vegas Monorail ahead of plans by the privately owned Strip line to file for a Chapter 11 restructuring.
The $24 million purchase, approved in a series of votes by the LVCVA board, includes a non-compete agreement held by Las Vegas Monorail Co., operator of the 3.9-mile network, and means the LVCVA ultimately will control the future of public mass transit on the east side of Las Vegas Boulevard, where the Las Vegas Convention Center is currently undergoing expansion.
The authority plans to hire a management company to run the line once the purchase closes and will dissolve Las Vegas Monorail as part of a prepackaged Chapter 11 filing. This could also involve auctioning the line off for the remainder of the eight to 10 years left to it before it’s expected to become obsolete.
The monorail has been closed since the pandemic hit in March but was struggling with declining ridership well before that, according to news reports. It is, however, popular with visitors during events at the Convention Center, and LVCVA Chief Executive Steve Hill said convention and trade show customers have asked the authority to keep the monorail operating.
“We have a different mission than someone in the private sector who would invest in the monorail in order to make a profit,” Hill said. “There’s a real cost to this community for the congestion that’s out there. This system, when we’re not in a pandemic, would be responsible for carrying 5 million show attendees and tourists. To not have the monorail run for the next eight or 10 years, that would be bad for the city. With us owning it, it provides a transition.”
“It opens up a whole lot of alternatives,” Clark County Commissioner Jim Gibson said, noting that a possible combination with the people-mover being constructed by an Elon Musk company beneath the Convention Center could one of a number of options worth exploring.
Hill said the LVCVA also plans to explore a variety of new uses for a passenger station and office space located just to the west of the Convention Center.
“That office space isn’t being used and, if that space didn’t have trains going through the first floor, we think we could put another 30,000 square feet of office space there,” he said. “It has a fabulous view of the Strip and huge panoramic windows to the south and to the north. It’s a cool building. We think it has real value in the future.”
Las Vegas Monorail reported last year that it had acquired funding to expand the line north to Las Vegas Sands’ Sands Expo Center and its Venetian/Palazzo resort complex and south to MGM Resorts’ Mandalay Bay. However, Hill said those projects will be scrapped.
