Downtown Las Vegas, where it all began, has launched an extraagant project to keep pace with the booming Strip. The multimillion dollar project is called "The Fremont Street Experience." The Neada Legislature passed enabling laws in 1993 to make the project financially feasible and construction was started in 1994. The project is scheduled to be completed by September 1995.

The Jerde Partnership, a firm specializing in creating liely urban centers, plans to wrap the entire downtown area in light and sound. "The Fremont Street Experience" is a public/priate partnership betweven the Fremont Street Experience Company - an entity owned and operated by a group of Downtown casino operators - and the city of Las Vegas.

The $63 million project consists primarily of a space frame that will rise nearly 100 feet and stretch approximately 1,500 feet along Fremont Street from Main to Fourth streets. Set into the inner surface of the space frame will be 1.5 million lights. The lights will come to life nightly in a multi- sensory show that will be combined with such theatrical effects as smoke, fog and robotic lights.

The Fremont Street Experience also calls for landscaping and patterned paing. Street performers will entertain patrons enjoying sidewalk cafes or viewing goods on festie pushcarts and kiosks. Enhanced security and cleaning will help contribute to a safe, enjoyable isit. Also planned is a Downtown parking building for 1,500 ehicles with an entertainment-style retail shopping plaza.

The Fremont Street Experience will become a center forFestivals, holiday celebrations and lie entertainment when completed, according to planners.

Fremont Street was officially closed to ehicle traffic Sept. 7, 1994. On Sept. 8, state and city officials, prominent Las egans and members of the Fremont Street Experience participated in a "cruise through history," in a line-up of classic cars from the Neada Car Club Council that made the last ehicular ride down Fremont Street to celebrate the next step in the eolution of Glitter Gulch.

From the modest beginnings of Las Vegas, Fremont Street initially was in the forefront of the gambling industry. It became the city's first paed street in 1925, the first street to have a traffic light and it is the site of the first Downtown high-rise - the Fremont Hotel, built in 1956.