Scott Roeben


Downtown’s Gateway Arches are a wonderful photo op, if you’re a thrillseeker.

The arches are located on Las Vegas Blvd., at the doorstep of The Strat, and the best angle for photos of the arches is right in the middle of traffic.

This is the mortal enemy of the “Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas” sign. In other words, a nemesis. We’ll wait.

The City of Las Vegas has approved a viewing deck to encourage people to not be flattened by cars.

Here’s a rendering of the no-nonsense platform provided by the City of Las Vegas in a Tweet.

The arrow points toward the arches. Props to the rendering guy for including that sweet ride.

The Tweet said the City has approved an agreement with The Strat “for the acquisition of land needed for construction and maintenance of a pedestrian view deck area for the Las Vegas Boulevard Arches to be located at 2121 South Las Vegas Boulevard and 2045 South Las Vegas Boulevard.”

Which is a smidge confusing, but that’s why you have us. Well, that and the 69 jokes. But mostly you have us to clarify Tweets by the City of Las Vegas.

First, the Tweet makes it seem like the viewing platform will be at The Strat. It won’t. The Strat (Golden Gaming) owns a parking lot across from The Strat, so the viewing platform will actually be on part of that lot.

Here’s where the viewing platform will be, sort of near the blue van. We assume the van will be moved to make way for the viewing platform.

Just match the bus stop with the wavy roof in the Google image and the one in the rendering.

This perspective should provide a solid angle for selfies with the arches, with the added bonus of getting The Strat in the background.

We’re pretty sure The Strat suggested this viewing platform, but the City was obviously cognizant of the potential for an accident involving tourists taking photos from the middle of the street, so it’s a win-win.

It’s also confusing that the City’s Tweet includes two addresses: 2121 South Las Vegas Boulevard and 2045 South Las Vegas Boulevard. Sorry, we can’t help with that one.

We suspect there were lawyers involved.

The arches are 80 feet tall and are illuminated with more than 13,000 LEDs. On Tinder, though, the arches say they’re 100 feet tall and have 20,000 LEDs.

The City of Las Vegas has really committed to its welcoming of people downtown recently.

The Gateway Arches cost about $6.5 million to construct, and the viewing platform is likely to cost another million, because anything you do costs at least a million dollars.

A few weeks ago, the City upgraded the showgirls at its welcome display just north of the arches.

This photo op is awkward, too. You have to park at Denny’s.

The hope, obviously, is to draw eyeballs and visitors to downtown Las Vegas. That’s the City of Las Vegas. The Las Vegas Strip isn’t in the City of Las Vegas. It’s in Clark County. Please don’t make us talk about this again, thanks.

In other Strat news, the resort is now part of the WorldHotels family of hotels. Here’s the announcement. One, we don’t really know what that means. Two, we have no idea what happened to the period between “World” and “Hotels.” Three, you may or may not be able to suss this out on the official WorldHotels site. Four, when was the last time you saw the word “suss” used in a sentence?” Five, yes, we tend to number things when we can’t figure out a way to end our stories. Six, we can’t believe you’re still reading this. Seven, we are superstitious, so we are definitely not stopping here. Eight, let’s wrap this up, shan’t we?

The pedestrian viewing deck isn’t the most exciting construction project in Las Vegas, but it has the potential to save lives, should anyone ever actually use it.

No timeline was given for the completion of the project, so until it’s done, don your reflective vest, light flares and do your best to survive your photo in front of the Gateway Arches.





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Mike McNamara

Mike McNamara

A Las Vegas Realtor since 2008. Mike has a wide range of knowledge around all things Las Vegas.

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