As Las Vegas continues to jump straight back through the downturn that is economic with the Strip posting its fifth annual revenue increase in a line, Sin City’s Fremont Street area downtown is experiencing a renaissance as well. In fact, the regeneration that is recent of Street and its environs is attracting countless visitors, Metro Police are being forced to rethink the way they police the whole city of Las Vegas.

‘ We had been extremely focused on Las Vegas Boulevard [the Strip] for a number of years because that’s where we had been seeing the infusion of individuals,’ Sheriff Doug Gillespie told Metro’s Fiscal Affairs Committee this week. ‘ But the dynamics have changed downtown. Now a whole lot more people are planning to come downtown on a more regular basis.’

It’s not just that the individuals are coming there in droves; the very nature for the tourism has changed, too. Although the area surrounding ‘Glitter Gulch,’ as it was once understood right back in Elvis’s day, was once a little rough round the edges, it is now learning to be a hub of art and culture. Bail bondsmen and pawnbrokers have now been at the least somewhat replaced with galleries and clothing that is vintage, because well bars, clubs and restaurants.

Millennials Descend

This means, in a nutshell, folks are spending less time within the casinos and more hours outside. Sidewalks are packed, often with drinkers, and this requires a kind that is completely different of enforcement and a higher police presence in the street.

Downtown Area Command Captain Shawn Anderson told the committee that the best answer is more authorities visibility, which from last thirty days he has had the oppertunity to implement, many thanks to new overtime funding.

‘It made a tremendous difference,’ he said. ‘The business community claims it is like all the time.’

Anderson said the deluge of visitors started initially to appear starting in 2012, and he thinks it represents a new demographic for vegas, ‘the millenials’ who favor events like the First arts and Food Party and attending the theater at the Smith Center for the Performing Arts over traditional gambling friday. Oh, and let’s not the your investment cash cow this is the recently passed Electrical Daisy Carnival (EDC), a type of latter-day Woodstock, but for a more well-heeled, young, and sometimes not-so-young crowd.

‘It’s the (Electric) Daisy Carnival … The millennials are maybe not planning to sit in a casino behind a slot machine,’ he said. ‘These are typically going to pub crawl. We’re seeing this type of massing enhance therefore that more Fridays are starting to look like this, Saturdays are starting to look like this and even midweek we’re seeing it downtown,’ he added.

100,000 Visitors Per Night

The committee heard that 100,000 people might check out downtown between noon and 4am, and that’s up through the 60,000 or 70,000 a years that are few. Too as increasing police presence, Anderson said that heavy stanchions have been strategically added to Fremont East to avoid people loitering, while ordinances have actually been enacted to curb ingesting, such as prohibiting liquor store booze from being consumed on the street. People are now regularly checked for ID as they enter Fremont Street.

The influx of revelers may suggest the police have their fingers full, but it addittionally indicates that Las Vegas’ diversification and regeneration tasks, implemented during the economic downturn, are working. The town got a scare during the recession, when gambling income plunged, and it realized it needed to diversify its entertainment offerings away from purely gambling that is traditional. And, while they might be little raucous on a Friday night, the city’s ability to attract the millennial ‘party people’ bodes well for the long-term economic future.