East Village West
Contrary to popular belief, Las Vegas is not, in fact, a city where you can find everything. True, you can gorge on prime rib for breakfast or play blackjack at 3 a.m. And not far from the city limits you can engage in the kind of adult activities that have been made illegal in 49 other states. However, according to Mark Advent, a casino developer and Las Vegas resident, something is missing from civic life.

"There's no place where I can stroll around," Mr. Advent said the other day on the phone from Los Angeles International Airport, where he was catching a flight to London. Las Vegas is one of the fastest-growing cities in the country, but, he said, there are no neighborhoods, no pockets, no gathering places. "There's no sense of community, like you have in New York," he said.

And so, in true Las Vegas fashion, Mr. Advent has decided to remedy what he sees as the city's lack of a neighborhood fabric by building one of his own. On the corner of Tropicana Avenue and Paradise Road, on a vacant patch of desert near the airport, will rise East Village, a retail-office-entertainment complex inspired by Manhattan's strollable streets. The $250 million project is tentatively scheduled to open in 2007.

Playing fast and loose with geographical borders, the development will contain a scale model of the Washington Square arch, a meatpacking district and a diamond district, which, as New Yorkers know, is a good 30 blocks north of the East Village. "It's not an exact replica," Mr. Advent explained, adding that the complex was more an homage to great neighborhoods (which explains the part of the development based on Pike Place Market in Seattle). The name, he said, stems from the location, which is one mile east of the Las Vegas strip, and from the fact that "it really is like a little village."

"It has texture," he added. "A tattoo shop, cobblestone streets, a bakery."

As it turns out, Mr. Advent has a bit of a history exporting the streets of Manhattan to the scorched Las Vegas earth. He was the mastermind behind New York-New York, the mammoth casino and hotel that opened on the strip in 1997 and has, among other things, copies of the Chrysler Building and the Statue of Liberty and a SoHo village shopping district. (It does not contain a Ray's Pizza, an attraction that is said to be in consideration this time.)

Mr. Advent had planned to take "Saturday Night Live" to Las Vegas - "restaurants, live entertainment." The head of NBC at the time was less enthusiastic. Then one night, after a couple of martinis, Mr. Advent had a eureka moment: "I thought, let's build all of New York. Let's build the Empire State Building, the Statue of Liberty - the whole thing." New York-New York was born.

Given his Robert Moses-like ambition and his résumé thus far, one would be forgiven for thinking that Mr. Advent was born in New York. Actually, he comes from a small town in Ohio, which he describes as "Mayberry - one cop car, no stoplight."

Mr. Advent, who is in his mid-40's and has a round, open face, still has the sunny can-do spirit of a Midwesterner. But he maintains an apartment in Westchester, spends about a third of his year in New York and admits to loving what he calls "the whole Village scene."

"I believe New York connotes the best of the best," he said, sounding downright boosterish. "There's a spirit here that's infectious. It's not really about replicating the Statue of Liberty at a third scale. It's the energy and vibe, the whole recipe rolled up into one big dessert. That's why it's such a great platform."

For his latest project, Mr. Advent is determined to build the kind of richly appointed, idiosyncratic structures found throughout Manhattan. Facades will be brick, and in some cases, detailing will be wrought iron. "Other developers keep saying: 'Your buildings aren't square. You've got a pie-shaped building. That's going to cost more,' " Mr. Advent said. "I'm going, yeah, it's a pie-shaped building. When you go to great cities, they build pie-shaped buildings."

Pie-shaped buildings notwithstanding, one questions whether it will be possible for East Village, Las Vegas, to instantly replicate the texture of a neighborhood that has developed over so many decades. According to Denise Scott Brown, an architect and urban planner who is a co-author of the architectural classic "Learning From Las Vegas," all new cities encounter this problem.

"But one thing Las Vegas would have that others might not is a whole lot of money," Ms. Scott Brown said. "With money, you can give a semblance of vitality. You can make it look as if it has a certain worn patina." Still, she said, "It's like putting a small child in some rather large shoes."

Mr. Advent, however, remains convinced that his neighborhood will be a success, so much so that he believes that even New Yorkers will respond to the ersatz version. "I know New Yorkers will want to hang out there," he said. As proof, he cited an attraction meant to remind them of their hometown, or at least to remind them of the tourists who visit their hometown. "We're even going to have the same horse-and-carriage experience as Central Park," he said.