Sunday, Dec. 1, 2024 | 2 a.m.
Doused in the waning sunlight coming through the large office windows, Mayor Carolyn Goodman sits at her desk with a smile on her face amid a room full of memories.
The office is outfitted with pictures of her children and grandkids, a bobblehead of her husband and former mayor, Oscar Goodman, flanked by iconic showgirls and a large “Welcome to Fabulous Mayor Goodman’s Office” sign greeting visitors. Glance out the window and you’ll see her view of the past 13 years: the ever-evolving downtown Las Vegas and Symphony Park.
The 25-year Goodman legacy running the city will end Wednesday when Mayor-elect Shelley Berkley assumes office, giving the 85-year-old Goodman plenty of time to reflect.
There has been plenty of good: The burgeoning of the Arts District she championed, the emergence of championship-winning professional sports, being a driving force in historic tourism numbers as a board member on the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority, developing the Medical District and more.
There’s also been some heartache in managing the health and economic crisis of the pandemic, and the recovery following the Oct. 1, 2017, mass shooting on the Strip.
Though she’s not sure what’s next for her or Oscar, who led the city for 12 years, the Goodmans are excited for their next chapter.
“I never knew what I was doing from the beginning, so now as I’m winding down this piece, do I know what I’m doing next? I haven’t a clue, but it will be wonderful,” Goodman told the Sun in an interview at her City Hall office. “What I have just come from is the best job in the whole world. My husband loved it before me for 12 years; he said he was the happiest mayor in the universe (and) I think I understand why, and it’s just been a great time.”
Their history in Las Vegas, cemented in part last week when a statue of the two was unveiled at City Hall, started like many others, Carolyn Goodman said.
They were a young couple who transplanted from the East Coast — Oscar from Philadelphia and Carolyn from New York City — after they met in college, moved to Las Vegas with about 30 boxes of books, a bedroom set and $87 to their name, she said.
Carolyn Goodman worked in advertising, marketing and publicity at the Riviera while Oscar Goodman secured a role at the district attorney’s office.
“This was heaven on Earth,” Carolyn Goodman said of the city, which at that point had a population of around 100,000 people.
She remembers how grateful she was to move into her and Oscar’s first apartment — a two-story unit with a small patio — off Sahara Avenue and Paradise Road.
The couple raised their four children in the city as Oscar Goodman began traveling around the country defending “alleged organized crime,” Carolyn explained. By the time all their children had gone off to college, Oscar Goodman had spent 35 years in law and was ready to retire.
But the Goodmans looked at the core of Las Vegas — which was boarded up and “just lost its heart and soul of everything it had been,” Carolyn said — and decided someone needed to revitalize the city.
Oscar Goodman won the mayor’s seat in 1999 and spent the next 12 years rebuilding downtown, then leading the charge for more arts and culture, a robust medical system, increased support for education and the introduction of major league sports teams.
With Oscar Goodman’s leadership came the start of Symphony Park, the Fremont Street Experience and the Arts District. His wife stepped in to take the reins in 2011, when at the behest of her family, who said she had to run despite never considering it before, she beat out over a dozen other opponents to win the mayor’s seat.
Since taking office, it’s been a “terrific” ride for Carolyn Goodman, even during some of its darkest moments. The COVID-19 pandemic, which shut down the Resort Corridor and downtown for nearly 90 days, was “a very difficult time.”
Goodman was vocal about keeping Las Vegas open — even with rising deaths brought on by the virus — because the region’s economy was tied to tourism. She also asked then-Gov. Steve Sisolak to keep schools open because of isolation fears for students.
She went on CNN and told Anderson Cooper that “we’ve never closed down the United States. We’ve never closed down Nevada. We’ve never closed down Las Vegas because that’s our job.”
The interview went viral and brought criticism from some. Goodman, four years later, stands by her views.
“It was a very difficult time, but I was very much about treating it as we had other diseases, flus — major flus and influenzas — that have taken hold, and I was very much about let each of us make a decision as to if we want to go into a restaurant or a hotel or some entertainment program or whatever; it’s our choice,” she said. “We make our choice with our own families, and we wear masks and we wash hands and do it.”
The most difficult part of her tenure was seeing the community mourn in the days after the Oct. 1, 2017, mass shooting on the Strip. It’s a night she vividly remembers.
Goodman said she had gone through FEMA training years earlier, giving her much-needed emergency management and disaster training that was useful in the hours after the tragedy that immediately killed 58 and wounded hundreds of others.
She was at University Medical Center after the shooting, recalling the swiftness of medical personnel in their response and the community rallying together to help each other heal.
She annually leads a remembrance ceremony downtown at the Las Vegas Community Healing Garden, an initiative from the city that opened days after the shooting and serves as a permanent place to heal.
It’s one of the many reasons why Goodman believes she is leaving the city in good hands.
“The Las Vegas community is a unique place; a blend of people of different nationalities, cultures, religions, races, ideas, and everybody that lives here, that stays here, believes, ‘Wow, I can do something to help or to change something, or to build something,’ ” she said.
She added, “We have 40 million-plus visitors that are coming for either a convention, to go to a sporting event, go to a theater, come here to the Smith Center, come to the Arts District, go to Lake Mead, go climbing in Red Rock — all of those things — and yet … the stable population has a vested interest, and they’re remarkable.”
It’s why Goodman worked hard to develop the Arts District — also known as 18b — that “sort of came like a little flower, and just keeps getting bigger and better and more successful,” she said. The neighborhood is one of the many things the mayor is proud to have helped build.
She also got to witness the opening of The Smith Center for Performing Arts, which was planned during Oscar Goodman’s tenure in office, and voted to green-light the future Las Vegas Museum of Art right next door in Symphony Park.
There’s also the Downtown Loop shuttle that takes people for free to places like the Strat, Fremont Street and the Arts District; the Courtyard Homeless Resource Center that was opened in 2017 for people experiencing homelessness; Strong Start Academy Elementary School, a bilingual charter institution sponsored by the city; and the Mayor’s Faith Initiative, which brings together local faith leaders to meet and share information about social services.
Mayor Carolyn Goodman listens during an interview at Las Vegas City Hall Wednesday, Oct. 23, 2024.
Carolyn Goodman’s last city council meeting was Nov. 6, filled with shiny commemorative balloons and emotional goodbyes from fellow council members.
Berkley said the Goodman “legacy should be celebrated” and she hopes that they will continue to stay active in the community. She’s known them for decades, having been part of the synagogue Oscar Goodman was president of when she was in her 20s, and working with him in Congress while Oscar was still mayor.
Berkley will be taking the reins from Carolyn Goodman, but isn’t too worried since “they are leaving the city in very good shape financially,” Berkley said. The Goodmans “have made a remarkable contribution to the city of Las Vegas,” and Berkley hopes “to capitalize on their success” in the coming years.”
Councilman Cedric Crear, whose last meeting was also Nov. 6, told the Sun he’s known the Goodman family his entire life. He was raised with their son, Oscar, played tennis with their other son, Ross, and remembered Carolyn always keeping an open door at their home.
He added that both Oscar and Carolyn Goodman “are always wonderful people” who “care about our community” and have been lifetime supporters of Crear, even when they didn’t realize they were.
“They love Las Vegas; they love family; and it has been an honor to work side by side with the mayor these past 6 1/2 years,” Crear said in a previous interview. “(There’s probably not) anybody on the council that spent more time with the mayor over these six years and we have jointly worked on so many projects together that I’ve learned a lot from her, and I’ll continue to learn a lot from them.”
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