Historic hotel

Las Vegas is not Salem or Gettysburg. With rare exception, our history is not a reason tourists come here from all over the world. In fact, once any building in this town is described as “historic,” it usually means it’s time to blow the thing up and build something new.

So it’s interesting that amid the devastation of the economic downturn and the simultaneous rebirth of downtown, the owners of one the city’s oldest hotels are pursuing something no other Las Vegas casino can claim: a listing on the National Register of Historic Places. The El Cortez opened in 1941 and, as the Review-Journal’s Benjamin Spillman wrote Saturday, its facade on Sixth and Fremont streets is essentially unchanged.

The hotel has almost completed its application to the National Park Service, but first must get approval from the city of Las Vegas and the Nevada State Historic Preservation Office. If the federal listing ultimately is granted, the El Cortez would gain a degree of cultural credibility and a new way to market itself and downtown.

“Getting a hotel-casino that maintains its integrity is really difficult,” said Ron James, Nevada state historic preservation officer. “The market is competitive for the new, not celebrations of the old.”

Which serves as a good reminder for the El Cortez to be careful in its pursuit of this listing. Might the owners one day want to perform major renovations? Might they want to sell? And what if the reinvention of downtown one day requires the El Cortez to make way for something bigger, brighter and more attractive to more visitors?

The National Park Service likes to claim that privately owned buildings on the National Register of Historic Places face no restrictions on construction and modifications, but plenty of people who have received a listing later expressed buyer’s remorse about state and federal limitations. And if a listed El Cortez decided to take advantage of federal tax credits or other public funding for renovations, it would find itself even more entangled in the bureaucracy.

If the El Cortez is all in for preservation, fine. But federal listings often come at the expense of freedom.