Las Vegas is built on fast living, and so it is a logical stop for the world’s fastest sport. But when Formula One makes its Vegas debut on the night of Nov. 18, the most astounding speed story might be about the venue itself.
In less than two years, organizers built a track and infrastructure—much of it permanent, some of it temporary. Terry Miller, the project manager for the Las Vegas Grand Prix, has worked on professional sports stadiums, and he says, “The order of magnitude of this project is significantly beyond what NFL stadiums or MLB stadiums are.”
The reasoning is simple. Imagine building a house on a lot. Now imagine building a house on that house. Stadium projects are challenging but self-contained: Architects have a clearly defined parcel of land to themselves. An F1 street track is part of a city—and, in this case, a vibrant city center that literally cannot afford to close down for a few days as other F1 hosts can. The southern Nevada tourism industry employs almost 15% of the labor force for the whole state. Miller says, “Singapore pretty much shuts down [the area around the track] for a month while they prepare everything.” That was not an option in Las Vegas. So they decided to do all the paving in the morning, when Sin City is quietest—and even then, they had to make sure customers and employees had a way to enter and exit each property.
