The Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority revealed at its July 14 meeting that it is in talks to acquire the Las Vegas Monorail Company and its 3.9-mile monorail route, which is currently idle due to the Covid-19 pandemic. LVCVA intends to reboot and operate the monorail when conventions and meetings begin to return to the market following the pandemic.
“We think that the monorail is an important transportation option when the destination is at full strength,” Steve Hill, president and CEO of the LVCVA, said at a board meeting. “It moves nearly 5 million per year, and a lot of those people are attendees here at the (Las Vegas) Convention Center. We want to make sure that the monorail system has the ability to continue to operate in the coming years.”
Hill told the board the authority would be in position to move rapidly once the convention business reboots. “It’s early in this conversation, although the conversation could move pretty quickly,” Hill said. “The current status of the market being shut down because of the virus has certainly harmed every organization, and the monorail is no exception to that, so this has caused the conversation to move forward at a fast pace.”
After the meeting, Hill told the Las Vegas Review-Journal that the idea of taking over the monorail system actually predates the coronavirus pandemic. “We had a light touch on the subject in late January or early February,” he said. “We sat down and said, hey, what do you think about this? And then the virus hit.”
“Like many other businesses, the system closed March 18 due to the pandemic’s impacts and remains closed, and we are forced to deal with this economic reality,” Monorail spokeswoman Ingrid Reisman told the Review-Journal.
“As a result, we are exploring ways to be able to open the system at the appropriate time and aid in the recovery of the tourism economy, while ensuring the future viability of the system.”
