Reid renovation, new airport top to-do list for incoming Vegas aviation director
For the first time in 12 years, Clark County has a new director of its aviation department. The move comes as passenger numbers decline, the airport is being renovated and a supplemental airport is being debated. Good thing he has experience working in a war zone.
During his 21 years in the U.S. Air Force as a civil engineering and mission support officer, James Chrisley designed and built runways and facilities for American military aircraft operating in Iraq and Afghanistan.
“It was a great experience building things in areas that were not in the best of conditions,” Chrisley, incoming director of the Clark County Department of Aviation, recalled in an interview last week.
When asked about Ivanpah Valley, the site of a proposed Southern Nevada Supplemental Airport on 23,000 empty acres just north of Primm, he said harsh desert environments weren’t a concern.
Chrisley, who spent the past 10 years as the airport’s senior director of aviation, is inheriting the top job from retiring director Rosemary Vassiliadis, who has held the position since 2013.
It includes overseeing Las Vegas’ Harry Reid International Airport, the seventh-busiest in North America, and the responsibility to connect Ivanpah and Reid, which are separated by 30 miles.
“The distance is not that far in the grand scheme, but it’s a challenge,” he said. “The key is that there has to be a seamless, reliable connection [between the two airports].”
Chrisley suggested a half-mile-wide transportation corridor on the east side of Interstate 15 could be designated as a dedicated road for aviation department-managed passenger service between the two sites.
That is just one bullet point on Chrisley’s to-do list — he’s also focused on implementing a comprehensive four-year modernization and expansion project for Reid Airport. The plan is for the Department of Aviation to squeeze as much space as possible out of the landlocked airport’s existing footprint.
The initial effort is to expand the number of gates at Terminal 1 from 39 to 65 through a redesign of the A and B gates. A wing with additional gates would be added on vacant land that once housed the since-demolished Terminal 2.
Plans have also been drawn up to reconfigure the second-level curbside drop-off, ticketing and baggage handling at Terminal 3 and improve walkways throughout the building to reduce congestion. Plans also include a revision to the airport’s ground transportation routes.
The projects were approved by the Clark County Commission nearly a year ago and the airport is finalizing plans for the phased-in development.
“Hopefully, by the end of this year, we'll have the first group of preliminary projects planned out and ready to go,” Chrisley said. “We'll be able to formally prioritize and finalize budgets and then start moving forward.”
He is a proponent of the two planned “multimodal centers” — large transportation hubs — that are part of Reid’s expansion. The centers include public transportation and rideshare service areas, and parking for airport crew members and employees.
Chrisley said one of the centers — most likely a location planned closest to Sunset Road — would serve as the connection for transportation to and from the Ivanpah site.
The Ivanpah site is going through an environmental impact study, which could take as long as two years, to determine its suitability. For now, Reid Airport is where he’s devoting his attention.
Chrisley joined the aviation department in 2015 as a senior director and has worked alongside Vassiliadis through all aspects of the airport’s challenges to serve Clark County’s 2.4 million residents and a tourist industry that drew 41.6 million visitors in 2024. The airport drew a record 58.4 million passengers in 2024, but passenger volume this year is down more than 4 percent through July.
Chrisley also oversees operations of four smaller Clark County airports: Henderson Executive, North Las Vegas, Jean Sport Aviation Center and Overton-Perkins Field.
In his previous role, Chrisley readied the airport for the Formula One Las Vegas Grand Prix races and Super Bowl LVIII, which drew larger-than-normal passenger traffic.
There are plenty of challenges in the new job. Spirit Airlines, the airport’s second-largest passenger carrier, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection for the second time in a year on Aug. 29. A week later, Spirit said it was ending services to 11 cities, eight of which have flights to and from Las Vegas.
“Fortunately for us, every one of those destinations has at least one other airline [serving Las Vegas],” Chrisley said. “So as they pull back or reduce, there are others ready to step up.”
Prediction markets could poach football betting from sportsbooks
A few days before the NFL kicked off its regular season, sports betting operators were cautioned to shore up their defenses.
Fitch Ratings Service said the rise of U.S. prediction markets, which are federally regulated, could take a slice out of the $30 billion that the American Gaming Association says will be wagered legally this season through sportsbooks and mobile apps in nearly 40 states.
“Prediction markets are emerging as a nationally accessible alternative to online gaming offerings,” Fitch analysts wrote in a statement, adding that businesses, such as New York City-based Kalshi, “underscore the evolving nature of the online gaming industry in the U.S.”
Kalshi, an online financial exchange and prediction market, began offering contracts on sports earlier this year. Customers take a yes or no position on the outcome of a game without betting odds and cash out if their prediction comes true. Operators say the markets are much like a stock exchange — buying shares of a company on the hopes its prospects would rise. Future predictions are being offered on the participants in Super Bowl LX, individual division champions and league MVPs.
The business has been blocking legal challenges from state gaming regulators, including those in Nevada, and continues to offer sports contracts. Kalshi is leveraging its federal certification from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and the lack of a definitive stance on whether it can be termed as gambling because there is no point spread.
Fitch warned investors that state and tribal gaming regulators are concerned that prediction markets can circumvent state laws and regulations on sports betting.
The firm’s analysts suggested that legal sports betting companies aligning themselves with the prediction markets could lose their licenses or lose out on opportunities in states where regulators have challenged those operations.
Meanwhile, Truist Securities gaming analyst Barry Jonas hosted a roundtable discussion on online gaming last week with several experts. There was universal agreement on one opinion — state gaming regulators were “ill-equipped” to deal with the emergence of the prediction markets.
Jonas wrote that sports betting operators “need to tread carefully to not upset” state gaming regulators and sports leagues, which have become partners in the expansion of sports betting.
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