Meanwhile, on the other side of the hotel, work goes on around the clock on a new $1.9 billion stadium that will be the home of the NFL’s Las Vegas Raiders beginning in 2020. It’s a reminder that Las Vegas moves on like it always has, through the good times and the bad.
It’s not that the city has forgotten the shooting or the victims. The white crosses adorned with pictures of those killed were moved recently for the anniversary to the rotunda of the Clark County government building, accompanying a heart-wrenching display of paintings of each person.
The victims are portrayed as surviving relatives wanted them to be. One young woman is wearing a Philadelphia Eagles jersey; a man is strumming a guitar. There’s a police officer in his uniform, and a man smiling while enjoying a day on the beach.
Gathered together for one night to enjoy country music , they are now linked together in eternity.
There’s a makeshift memorial garden downtown, just around the corner from an adult bookstore, where painted stones and pictures hung in newly planted trees tell stories of lives lost.
“Rest easy with my grammy, Beebra,” read the inscription on one framed picture of a smiling woman and her young children.
On a recent day, a few workers were digging a hole for a 3,000-pound (1,360-kilogram) rock with the victims’ initials. A permanent memorial will eventually be located elsewhere — no word from MGM on what will happen to the shooting site itself — but has yet to be planned and is likely years away.
Everybody has a story about how a community came together in the wake of the shooting. Strangers loaded victims in the back of their pickup trucks and rushed them to the hospital. Doctors and nurses rushed in to try to save the wounded, and people — including players from the city’s newly minted NHL team — lined up by the hundreds to donate blood. Residents dug deep into their pockets to donate to the victims and their families .
It was, former Las Vegas Review-Journal gossip columnist Norm Clarke said, reminiscent of the response to the 1980 MGM Grand fire that killed 85, when there was a community outpouring for those killed.
As with the fire, most of the shooting victims were tourists. Only five were from the Las Vegas area.
But Las Vegas itself is a city that largely is a collection of immigrants from around the nation and the world, many with no ties to each other before the shooting seemed to bring them together, at least temporarily.
Lee, the community activist, remembers neighbors in gated communities who had done little but nod at each other over the years gathering to talk afterward. And a ceremony at the first Golden Knights hockey game a few days later had anyone who watched shedding tears.
Soon, though, “Vegas Strong” largely morphed into “Vegas Born” with the hockey team. Its improbable run into the Stanley Cup Final became more of a story than the way the team helped bring a city together to heal.
And through it all, the fun never really stopped on the same Strip where the massacre unfolded. A city that attracts 42 million visitors a year kept the welcome mat out following the shooting as tourists drank, partied and threw the dice inside bustling casinos.
It’s taken the Mandalay Bay some time to recover its footing, and tourism numbers are down slightly this year. But Las Vegas’ reinvention continues with the new stadium and the resumption of construction at two big hotel projects.
And now, as the popular local Twitter feed Vital Vegas asked: How do you commemorate something you don’t want to think about?
“A lot of people have probably put it out of their minds,” said Steve Sisolak, a Clark County commissioner who in the hours after the shooting spearheaded a victim’s fund that raised millions and is now running for governor. “The anniversary is going to bring up a lot of feelings, good and bad.”
The city will mark the anniversary with a string of events in the days surrounding Oct. 1. And at 10:01 p.m. — the time the shooting began — the lights on gleaming marquees will dim along the Strip.
It’s not closure, but it is one more tribute in a way only Las Vegas can give.
Then, as always, the city that never sleeps will move forward once again.
