When one visits Las Vegas for the first time, it seems like this big shiny oasis in the middle of a desert. As you arrive by plane, you can see the lights of the famous Strip miles away. And when you land, an air of excitement rushes through your veins while walking through the airport amidst an army of one arm bandits. But that's not all Las Vegas is about.

Jane Baer, Principal of Baer Animation Company and her dog Millie.

For instance, Fremont Street, or Glitter Gulch, has not been as glamorous for visitors and locals, yet it is still an important part of the local scene. Of late, the area has been rejuvenated with the construction of a new pedestrian mall, built in the hope of complementing the extravaganza of hotels and casinos on the more illustrious Strip. The result is a mall in the classic Vegas style, highlighted by the glitz of the Fremont Street Experience, which had its gala opening December 14, 1995.

The Experience was put together by the efforts of the Fremont Street Experience Company (made up of a collection of hotel and casino operators), the City of Las Vegas and the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority, who collectively invested $70 million to transform Fremont Street into an urban "people place." The highlight is the huge Space Frame, which features dazzling computer-animated light and sound shows every night produced by such studios as The Baer Animation Company and See3.

A Sense of Scale.
The Space Frame itself arches to a height of 90 feet above street level and stretches almost 1,400 feet along Fremont Street, from Main Street to Fourth Street; its interior surface covers more than 175,700 square feet, an area equal to slightly more than four acres. The frame is 5 feet deep and has a curved radius of 44 feet Set into the inner surface of the frame are nearly 2.1 million lights and is unofficially considered to be the world's largest graphics display system. Las Vegas obviously never abandons its sense of scale!

According to Steve Weeks, assistant division manager with Young Electric Sign Company, "This is the biggest project our company has ever worked on in its 75-year history." Within the frame are 208 speakers capable of producing 540,000 watts of "concert quality music" and 121 computers containing a combined 100 gigabytes of storage which can generate the animated images and sound.