F-1 in Las Vegas: a roaring spectacle for fans, but a huge headache for locals

Rajine Jones sits front row at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, one of the most daring events to storm into a city built on spectacle. Not that she’ll be able to see it.

On Saturday night, Formula One race cars roared down the Las Vegas Strip and zoomed past towering casinos, just outside the convenience store where Mrs. Jones sells vape cartridges and energy drinks to tourists. But race organizers have wrapped the Strip in black tarpaulin and fencing, and covered the glass of pedestrian walkways with white film and spotlights, making the festivities invisible to those without a $1,000 ticket.

“They blocked it off,” Mrs. Jones said, looking out the front door at a tarpaulin-covered fence. “We can’t see anything.”

Race and county officials described the barriers and film as safety measures to protect the public and drivers. But for workers and small business owners, it’s the latest indignity in a months-long construction project that has turned the Strip into a racetrack while creating massive headaches.

Race organizers and tourism officials have touted the Las Vegas Grand Prix as a sporting and economic success story years in the making — one that will infuse Las Vegas with celebrities, concerts and $1 billion in economic activity during a normally quiet pre-Thanksgiving -weekend.

But local businesses and workers say they have been disproportionately forced to pay the price – in the form of lower profits, layoffs and irritated hours in traffic. They say that while the race can fill airports with private jets and penthouse suites with high-rollers, the losses suffered by ordinary workers and small businesses are overlooked.

“You can’t do this to a city,” said Wade Bohn, who runs Jay’s Market, a gas station and convenience store a few blocks from Las Vegas Boulevard, the formal name for the Strip.

He and other business owners say they have lost customers in the past six months as construction and road closures have turned the Strip into a gridlocked labyrinth. Crews repaved the roads to accommodate Formula 1 racers traveling at 200 miles per hour, built a pit area and erected temporary grandstands for 105,000 fans.

At Battista’s Hole in the Wall, an old-school Italian restaurant in the middle of construction, revenue from each dinner service is down about $6,000 a night. The owner, Randy Markin, said he no longer pays himself and can no longer afford to give his staff quarterly bonuses.

Hourly workers at casinos, hotels and restaurants also say they have been hit hard. Some waiters and bartenders have lost thousands of dollars in tips due to the decline in customers. Some people’s travel times have tripled.

“They’re not paying me for the extra time,” said Carmen Gomez, who works nights sweeping the pedestrian bridges that span Las Vegas Boulevard. She said her 15-minute bus ride to work now takes an hour.

Ms. Jones, 28, who works at the grocery store on Las Vegas Boulevard, said she must navigate a series of road closures and one-lane traffic to get her 8-year-old son and 2-year-old twins to a 24-hour child care facility, then battle through a second gantlet to get from daycare to her job. Her half-hour commute is now 90 minutes each way.

At the cherry-red Jay’s Market on Thursday, Mr. Bohn struggled to keep his emotions in check as he surveyed the half-empty store. He blamed a temporary bridge on Flamingo Road that was built to direct traffic over part of the racecourse. It has completely led customers away from him.

Normally his gas station is full of tourists from California filling their tanks and grabbing sandwiches, but he said his sales are down $2.2 million this year compared to 2022.

He has laid off seven of his 12 employees and says he doesn’t know if his store will survive if the Grand Prix becomes an annual event in the heart of the Strip, as local leaders envision. He said he sent several emails and called the Clark County commissioners, who approved the race, but received no response. (Because the Strip and racetrack are outside Las Vegas city limits, the event is overseen by the county).

Colleen Angel is one of the employees fired from Mr. Bohn’s store. She had taken the job as a cemetery cashier earlier this year, hoping it would become permanent work after years of doing a variety of gigs, including teaching singing, performing in a classic rock band and doing retail work.

She said the tensions surrounding the Grand Prix had highlighted the unequal treatment received by big companies and the thousands of workers who keep the roulette wheels spinning, the cushions padded, the floors shiny and the drinks cold.

“It’s not just bad traffic for a few months,” she said. “It’s the people who work on the Strip. The reason people come here from all over the world, the facilities: it takes a lot of backbreaking work to keep it in place.”

Fans and race organizers are calling the Grand Prix a triumphant return that brings Formula 1 racing back to Las Vegas for the first time in 40 years. Saturday’s race is the first in what is expected to be a… decade of racing, and local officials say they want a “lifelong partnership” with Formula 1 – part of a campaign to diversify the Strip with new sports stadiums and an alien Magic 8 ball of an amphitheater called the Sphere.

County officials have said the race is expected to raise $100 million in taxes and create at least 7,700 jobs.

“It hasn’t all been sacrifices,” County Commissioner Jim Gibson said. told 8 News Now Las Vegas. Members of the county commission did not respond to interview requests or declined to comment. Race organizers did not respond to a request for comment.

Earlier this fall, the committee sharply questioned race officials about their plans to get thousands of casino workers to and from work. Some committee members have also objected a Grand Prix request for Clark County to secure $40 million to help pay for roadwork done for the race.

One of the questions still looming over the race like a cloud of exhaust fumes is whether the race can attract enough people to fill 105,000 seats and generate all the predicted economic returns for Las Vegas. On Friday, the day before the race, tickets were still available for the three-day event, and ticket prices on resale websites were going for less than full price.

But when the race cars made their first practice run Thursday evening, the Strip was filled with thousands of excited fans from China, Mexico, Europe and across the United States, decked out in Ferrari T-shirts and Mercedes-Benz baseball caps. and Red Bull racing jackets.

Some fans, like 31-year-old Jesus Nuñez, who flew in from Mexico City with eight family members, couldn’t afford tickets, so they sat along a railing outside a casino, hoping to catch a glimpse of the Mexican driver Sergio Pérez through the black curtain. shielded fencing. “It’s exciting,” he said.

Zia Hasan, who bought tickets as a birthday gift for his 17-year-old son, Shayan, said it was exciting to wander Las Vegas Boulevard next to the racing lights.

“The tickets are pricey, but it’s once in a lifetime,” he said.

However, a different kind of Las Vegas Grand Prix takes place away from the track and the lights.

There on the clogged streets, Tsegaw Ashine, 38, a taxi driver who moved to Las Vegas in 2016, said he would have loved to watch the Grand Prix but instead spent the race weekend swinging through the orange barrels, dodging angry drivers and trying to earn enough to get by despite the gridlock.

“Our cause is our time,” he said. “We have to try to get more people.”