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Joe Schoenmann

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  • Joe Downtown

    Thursday, March 14, 2013

    Thursday morning at The Beat. Just another busy day at the unofficial center of downtown business.

  • Joe Downtown

    Wednesday, March 13, 2013

    The businessman is renovating 247 apartment units.

  • Joe Downtown

    Monday, March 11, 2013

    A Reno public relations firm is adding an office in the Emergency Arts building on Fremont Street, aiming its focus on the growing tech startup business environment in Las Vegas.

  • Joe Downtown

    Thursday, March 7, 2013

    Downtown as seen through the eyes of Tom Haskins, 56, who moved here from Seattle last week after reading about downtown’s redevelopment.

  • Art

    Thursday, March 7, 2013

    For well over a decade, art has been part of the planned rebirth of downtown Las Vegas. So it came as something of a shock to downtowners a few weeks ago when Las Vegas Councilman Bob Beers suggested eliminating the city’s Percent for the Arts program.

  • Joe Downtown

    Wednesday, March 6, 2013

    Downtown is a whirlwind of activity. Take a moment to take stock!

  • Joe Downtown

    Saturday, March 2, 2013

    Claire Jane Vranian’s obsession with fashion and feathers, combined with an innate need to be creative, led to an association with Joe Elliott, lead singer for the iconic ‘80s rock band Def Leppard, and success in the clothing business.

  • Joe Downtown

    Thursday, Feb. 28, 2013

    Within the next several months, Las Vegas will unveil free wireless Internet access in a limited downtown area. Jace Radke, city spokesman, said free Wi-Fi would be activated in two phases: The first phase will include an area bound by Charleston Boulevard on the south, U.S. 95 to the north, Interstate 15 to the west and Eighth Street to the east.

  • Joe Downtown

    Wednesday, Feb. 27, 2013

    So a choreographer, serial entrepreneur, nuclear scientist, food engineer, futurist, cancer-detector inventor, multisense designer and violinist all got together one day. And the punchline? There isn’t one. This is actually happening and you can watch it all via livestream video in the downtown Construction Zone speakers space, 158 S. Seventh St., through Friday.

  • Joe Downtown

    Wednesday, Feb. 27, 2013

    It’s been just over two years since Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh announced the movement of his headquarters from Henderson to Downtown. In that time, Downtown has changed—greatly in some areas, more slowly in others—and growth and interest in Downtown business has outpaced predictions made before the Zappos declaration in late 2010.

  • Joe Downtown

    Thursday, Feb. 21, 2013

    Stefania Druga is only 26 but has lived around the world and, more intriguingly, knows how to make a battery from a lemon, extract DNA from strawberries and create her own video games. Over two hours this weekend, she will help kids make their own video games from scratch using free software, play with graffiti, create a conducting circuit from dough and do other fun tasks that have a scientific bent.

  • Joe Downtown

    Wednesday, Feb. 20, 2013

    For Michael Downs, former vice president of operations at Bellagio, Downtown Las Vegas used to barely register on his day-to-day radar. Yet downtown is his new work home. He’s shed the suit and tie for, on most days, jeans and a hoodie as the new executive vice president of operations for Downtown Project. Like Downs, others are drastically changing their lives to become part of the Downtown community.

  • Joe Downtown

    Wednesday, Feb. 20, 2013

    Craig Adkins has spent decades creating efficiencies in production lines for a variety of companies; his latest job was as vice president of fulfillment services for Zappos. About a year ago, Adkins started working on a plan to start yet another venture — bringing shoe manufacturing, not just shoe distribution, to Las Vegas. With support from the Downtown Project, an investment group that includes Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh, Adkins expects his shoe-manufacturing business, Fremont Shoes, to open by the end of the year.

  • Joe Downtown

    Monday, Feb. 18, 2013

    New owners of Atomic Liquors on Fremont Street, one of the oldest free-standing taverns in Las Vegas, finally opened a floor safe discovered months ago during remodeling.

  • Joe Downtown

    Wednesday, Feb. 6, 2013

    "Thursday is the new Friday," according to one Downtown businesswoman.

  • Joe Downtown

    Wednesday, Feb. 6, 2013

    The oddity of a free legal clinic in Las Vegas isn’t defined by the fact it sits under a tent in the middle of First Friday, a downtown monthly fest for art, entertainment and food. Some advice-seekers might appear odd, such as the bearded lady from a cancelled television show, but that’s not it, either. What puts The Art of Law Free Legal Clinic in a different realm is attorney Matt Callister, the man who started it. Talk to 10 people and you’ll likely get 10 different descriptions for the guy.

  • Joe Downtown

    Tuesday, Feb. 5, 2013

    Imagine a world without cars. Zach Ware asked some 300 people to do just that, then told them how a system of bikes, electrical vehicles, buses and, yes, a helicopter, should be in place by this fall to allow those living downtown to get by without their own car.

  • Music

    Tuesday, Feb. 5, 2013

    City leaders next week will consider plans to turn a vacant, three-acre lot on Fremont Street into the home of the Life Is Beautiful Festival, a Downtown Project-supported event scheduled for October.

  • Joe Downtown

    Friday, Feb. 1, 2013

    Businesses are slowly moving farther east on Fremont Street. Airstream 2 Go just signed a lease for land at 123 N. 10th St., at Ogden Avenue, where current-model Airstream trailers and trucks to tow them will be available for rental.

  • Joe Downtown

    Wednesday, Jan. 30, 2013

    Most Las Vegans came from somewhere else, but feeling ownership of Las Vegas is on the rise.

  • Joe Downtown

    Saturday, Jan. 26, 2013

    University of Iowa lecturer David Gould has created a course that links Las Vegas and Iowa City because of what’s happening downtown; it might not look like anywhere in Iowa, but downtown’s community-oriented redevelopment is the perfect landscape for Gould’s class, Reimagining Downtown.

  • Joe Downtown

    Friday, Jan. 25, 2013

    Amateur sports is a $20 billion U.S. industry and some 2.3 billion people participate in amateur sports worldwide. In Las Vegas alone, thousands of people, young and old, play soccer, kickball, football, softball, baseball, basketball and more.

  • Film

    Thursday, Jan. 24, 2013

    Many people know about the the 2005 movie, “Brokeback Mountain,” a story about a romantic relationship between two modern-day cowboys that won three Academy Awards. But there are so many movies involving the lesbian/gay/bi/transgender lifestyle that a gay nightclub under construction downtown will include a theater devoted to LGBT movies.

  • Joe Downtown

    Wednesday, Jan. 23, 2013

    Get to know the person who steered the Zappos CEO to Downtown Vegas.

  • Music

    Wednesday, Jan. 23, 2013

    Justin Graham was looking to build his record label, Attain Records, in Las Vegas long before he heard of Zappos, Tony Hsieh or the Downtown Project. But the fact that community-oriented development is being nurtured downtown strengthened Graham's conviction that downtown was exactly where he wanted to establish roots.

  • Joe Downtown

    Wednesday, Jan. 16, 2013

    Most people think of new taverns, eateries and music when envisioning the unfolding redevelopment of Fremont East, that portion of road east of the canopied Fremont Street Experience. Most people also know Tony Hsieh is behind much of the redevelopment. Hsieh is CEO of Zappos, an online shoe and clothing retailer. For that reason, it isn’t hard to see why much of what’s to come is tied into the garment, fashion and clothing business.

  • Joe Downtown

    Wednesday, Jan. 16, 2013

    Joe meets the man who's been leaving him odd messages at the Beat.

  • Joe Downtown

    Tuesday, Jan. 15, 2013

    A long local nightmare with downtown parking meters may be moving in the right direction. Las Vegas officials will consider the purchase of 233 computerized parking meters that accept debit and credit cards.

  • Joe Downtown

    Tuesday, Jan. 15, 2013

    On a tiny slice of street in downtown Las Vegas, in an area south of Charleston Boulevard between Las Vegas Boulevard and Maryland Parkway, startup companies are sharing homes and each other’s technical skills.

  • Joe Downtown

    Saturday, Jan. 12, 2013

    There may be no one better suited to configure a new way to practice medicine in Las Vegas than Zubin Damania, a Stanford-trained doctor who last year uprooted from the Bay Area and moved his family to Las Vegas. Joining an army of people lured downtown to try something new, Damania is dead serious about medicine — and he embodies a streak of witty silliness displayed on his website.

  • Joe Downtown

    Friday, Jan. 11, 2013

    Three pallets full of vortex dome “stuff” have arrived in Las Vegas, now just waiting for a concrete pad to be poured at the site of the downtown Container Park to be built at Seventh and Fremont streets. Ed Lantz, CEO of Vortex Immersion Media, said the dome could be up in March.

  • Joe Downtown

    Tuesday, Jan. 8, 2013

    A watering hole at The Ogden means some of the people who work online from their high-rise condo may never have to leave the building for nightly entertainment.

  • Joe Downtown

    Tuesday, Jan. 8, 2013

    A war of juices is taking place behind the scenes downtown, as almost a half-dozen small businesses vie for space in the soon-to-be renovated John E. Carson Hotel at the northwest corner of Sixth and Carson streets.

  • Art

    Monday, Jan. 7, 2013

    The energy surrounding downtown’s resurgence isn’t all about turning the old into a new business. Some tapping into the human current sense it’s a rare chance, a small opening in the window of the city to connect people to people.

  • Museums

    Friday, Jan. 4, 2013

    The ShoeZeum's run in Las Vegas' Neonopolis was more of a sprint than a marathon. But Neonopolis’ owner says the departure of the shoe museum after only three months was according to plan.

  • Joe Downtown

    Thursday, Jan. 3, 2013

    A Berkeley professor/inventor’s talk about “cloud robotics” – a way to make robots more aware – is likely to stimulate the minds of some and confuse others Friday at Downtown Project’s construction zone trailer .

  • Joe Downtown

    Thursday, Jan. 3, 2013

    A gathering of some 50 people at The Beat coffee shop downtown was almost a throwback to the days when Republicans and Democrats acted civilly toward each other.

  • Joe Downtown

    Wednesday, Jan. 2, 2013

    Some happenings downtown are hidden from the eye because they aren’t ready to be unveiled. Others are hidden on purpose, because it makes them more fun.

  • Joe Downtown

    Saturday, Dec. 29, 2012

    Much of life’s rich pageant strolls up and down East Fremont Street each day, hunched over and alone, giddily holding hands, staggering drunk or walking with the ramrod stiff spine of the self-satisfied. At least that’s how the people-watchers size them up. Who are they really?

  • Joe Downtown

    Wednesday, Dec. 26, 2012

    One largely unseen element of the Fremont Street Experience's New Year's Eve party is different this year. A relatively new company called TicketCake is handling ticket sales to the event. TicketCake is a downtown-based business, having moved here earlier this year from Utah after winning funding from Vegas Tech Fund.

  • Joe Downtown

    Wednesday, Dec. 26, 2012

    In nine months, 1,400 Zappos employees will start working Downtown. That's just the beginning. Hsieh has talked openly about all the plans he’s been working on for a year or more and how many of those will be unleashed in the next few months. People will see new businesses everywhere. Suddenly.

  • Joe Downtown

    Wednesday, Dec. 19, 2012

    Armed with a letter of encouragement from Mayor Carolyn Goodman, Steven M. Rutherford arrived with his own Las Vegas song, one he says is more up-to-date and ready to become as iconic as Elvis’ “Viva Las Vegas.”

  • Joe Downtown

    Tuesday, Dec. 18, 2012

    First, Zappos and its CEO Tony Hsieh pledged $1.5 million to Teach for America, which will bring hundreds of new college graduates to Las Vegas to teach in economically disadvantaged schools in Las Vegas. Venture for America then received a $1 million pledge. Now comes Code for America.

  • Joe Downtown

    Tuesday, Dec. 18, 2012

    A few bikes with back-end solar panels are on the street now. but only as tryouts. During the first week of January, a bike-share program targeting Zappos employees who work downtown will be formally unveiled.

  • Architecture

    Tuesday, Dec. 18, 2012

    A PBS film crew packed and unpacked its gear Tuesday morning on East Fremont Street, interviewing a Downtown Project employee in preparation for a new show to air in late spring.

  • Joe Downtown

    Tuesday, Dec. 18, 2012

    You can’t swing a dead laptop without hitting someone downtown talking about “Downtown Project” and the Oz-like dreams of more and more development the project is expected to bring to East Fremont and surrounding areas.

  • Joe Downtown

    Monday, Dec. 17, 2012

    While being interviewed in front of an audience in the double-wide trailer that doubles as a speakers bureau at at Seventh and Fremont streets, Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh said to expect an explosion of development along Fremont Street in the next year.

  • Joe Downtown

    Friday, Dec. 14, 2012

    A Czech Republic exchange student asked anyone who would listen Friday morning about his desire to walk from Fremont Street to Sunrise Mountain. “Vat’s zee best way to get there?” asked Stepan Kucera, on break from a Louisiana university where he spent the semester studying history. Overseas, the 27-year-old is a journalist for the daily newspaper, Právo.

  • Joe Downtown

    Thursday, Dec. 13, 2012

    Apparently imported from North Korea, a unicorn was spotted Wednesday night in downtown Las Vegas in, of all places, a bar. Friends of Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh were stunned to see the magical beast inside the Downtown Cocktail Room, where dozens of revelers were helping celebrate Hsieh’s 39th birthday.

  • Joe Downtown

    Wednesday, Dec. 12, 2012

    In his debut, Joe Schoenmann recalls highlights from living Downtown.