LAS VEGAS (KTNV — A multimillion-dollar donor behind the airport’s name change from McCarran to Harry Reid International Airport tells me he’s not happy about it.
Three years have passed and the new signage is still not finished.
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Former Diamond Resorts CEO and founder Stephen Cloobeck told me he was upset because he donated $2.7 million and also turned to the Kirk Kerkorian Foundation when more money was needed.
Now he wants to know what the signage is all about.
“We change signs in hotels within months. That we can’t do that throughout the airport is a travesty. It’s a travesty to the donors,” Cloobeck told me. “This is hard-earned money. We did this with no taxpayer money. This is private donations. The original budget was $5 million and the signage they proposed in terms of the monument signs was not an example of what the county commission had approved. Harry Reid International. Period.”
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I have reached out to Clark County authorities for answers.
They sent us a statement that reads in part: “Clark County strongly denies the allegation that work to rename the airport Harry Reid International has not progressed as planned.”
The county added that the aviation authority has made the process transparent and that supply chain issues and rising construction costs have impacted projects since the project began during the pandemic.
I asked Cloobeck what he thought of the district’s response, and he called it a “pile of word salad.”
“I don’t think some of the county staff were comfortable with this from day one and fought tooth and nail against it,” Cloobeck said. “We want transparency. We want to know what the money was spent on. We want accountability. We want to see timelines for implementation. The state put the signage together immediately. The state. Why is the county taking so long to do this?”
According to the county, several large signs are scheduled to be completed in the fall: the monument signs at Tropicana and Paradise and Tropicana and Koval, as well as the “Welcome to Las Vegas” signs at Gates D and E.
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