LAS VEGAS — A middle-aged couple strolled hand-in-hand on the long, covered walkway that leads from the Las Vegas Strip to the entrance of the Bellagio, stopping only briefly to observe the casino resort’s famous fountains booming skyward in the distance.

Seemingly dissatisfied with the view from afar — all anyone can get right now with construction blocking the traditional viewing area in front of the fountains — the couple turned and kept walking.

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“What is all that they’re building?” the man asked.

“Another hotel,” the woman replied confidently.

Actually, it’s not another hotel — though, given the size and scope of the project, one could perhaps mistake the construction for something more than a temporary setup. On the lakefront sidewalk, one of the most famous areas of the Strip, MGM Resorts is assembling what will be the wildly luxurious Bellagio Fountain Club — a hospitality area with top-notch food and views of Formula One cars racing down the Strip at an estimated 212 mph when the Las Vegas Grand Prix comes to town in late November.

Three-day ticket packages to the Fountain Club can be yours for only $11,247. That’s per person, by the way.

Though the tourist couple didn’t realize what they were looking at, most visitors do. F1 is hard to miss for anyone in Las Vegas at the moment. Lighting trusses extend more than one mile down the west side of the Strip, major side roads are being bisected by racetrack fencing, and grandstands are going up in front of iconic attractions like the Bellagio Fountains and Mirage Volcano (partially atop the water).

F1 signage is everywhere, and it all serves as a giant promotion for what’s to come.

“This is F1 right here!” a man said to his group of friends said, as he emerged from Harrah’s and pointed to the trusses on the other side of the street.

Further down the Strip, outside the Cosmopolitan, a man looked at the fresh asphalt laid down on the southbound lanes of Las Vegas Blvd. and said to his group: “If I can find tickets for November, do you guys wanna go?”

An awkward co-existence  

A month out from the grand prix, it’s somewhat of a disjointed scene as track assembly coexists alongside the (relatively) normal life in Vegas.

On a pedestrian bridge outside the Cosmo, where Lewis Hamilton will pass underneath before making a left turn onto Harmon Ave., a busker drums on white buckets. On a corner outside the Flamingo and across the street from where Max Verstappen’s Red Bull will soon scream by, “The Dancing Grandma” draws a crowd while hula-hooping to loud music. A Mickey Mouse and Bumblebee from “Transformers” rope in passersby near the Mirage for photos, mere feet from a DRS Zone.

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The smell of marijuana hangs in the air as pushy workers attempt to pass out “Girls Direct To You” advertisements with the thwack thwack of the small cards — not exactly the glamorous image F1’s going for. But whether anyone is ready or not, the Strip will have a much different vibe a few weeks from now.

Near the intersection of Harmon and Koval Lane, in a formerly vacant 39-acre lot next to an apartment complex and catty-corner from a Top Golf, F1 is building a spectacular 300,000 square foot pit building with garages, suites and a rooftop deck capped with a giant screen in the shape of the F1 logo. The building is three American football fields long and includes a grand entrance with escalators and a video screen. It also happens to be the only permanent structure of all that is being assembled for the grand prix.

F1 owner Liberty Media, which is putting on a race itself for the first time instead of relying on a promoter, spent $240 million on the vacant lot alone. In August, Liberty said it expected capital expenditures for the race as a whole to approach $400 million.

During a recent tour of the shiny new pit building, a worker filled soap dispensers inside upscale bathrooms (which feature black and red finishes and lighting) in advance of the inspections required for a certificate of occupancy. But there still remained much work to do on other parts of the property, which features a towering grandstand, all of the team hospitality structures in the paddock area and Turns 1-4 of the track — including the start/finish line.

From the top of the pit building, you can get a general idea of where the circuit travels. It winds off property and through the intersection of Koval and Flamingo Ave. — where Tupac Shakur was fatally shot in 1996 — and around the jaw-dropping new Sphere venue, which has a T-Mobile-branded general admission zone with a stage that will feature performances from J. Balvin, Major Lazer and Mark Ronson.

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Then it’s a turn down Sands Ave., where cars will zip past the convention center and make a left turn onto the Strip between the Venetian and the Wynn. But if last week’s construction-related traffic on Sands was any indication, the F1 cars will be the only thing moving quickly during race weekend.

Vegas residents “not really” excited

“Right now if you don’t know where you’re going, it could take you 30 minutes to go a couple casinos down the Strip,” said Dale Corson, who has been driving taxi cabs in Vegas for 12 years. “And it’s going to get way worse.”

Corson blamed the traffic buildups on track construction and the accompanying unpredictable road closures which require locals to “guess every morning” about where setup is taking place. Alternate routes are frequently required, but aren’t communicated well enough.

The traffic on race weekend will be so bad, Corson said, that he’s planning to take all three days off instead of trying to shuttle customers amid the gridlock.

The ranks of disgruntled locals even include race fans. Marshall Harhay, who has lived in Las Vegas since 1982, was thrilled to hear F1 was coming to town and hoped to attend the race with his son.

But when the Harhays saw the ticket prices, which started at $1,500 each for grandstand seats, they realized “regular people” like themselves couldn’t afford to go.

“As a local, all of the conversations I’ve had with friends is about the inconvenience,” Harhay said while preparing to watch the recent NASCAR race at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. “There’s not really any excitement about the event or the race.”

Of course, that was probably always going to be the case. The very concept of an F1 race in Las Vegas is geared toward the most over-the-top experience imaginable, even if 100,000 fans are expected to attend each day. The richest of the rich and coolest of the cool risk FOMO if they don’t show up in Vegas, and all of them will clamor to get into one of the VIP hospitality areas, whether in the pit building, a viewing area on casino property or trendy spots like the Red Bull Energy Station and nightlife-inspired Heineken House.

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And for those wondering if they could skirt around the high ticket prices by grabbing a table at a Strip-side restaurant? We didn’t find one in a few hours of walking around last week. Employees at Margaritaville, Bubba Gump’s, Rainforest Cafe and Sugar Factory — all which have prime views of the racetrack — said they had been bought out for all three days of the race weekend.

The (construction) show must go on

Over the next few weeks, the city will continue to be transformed as other high-end hospitality zones and more of the track structure are completed in the coming weeks. And though most areas will return to their default look after F1 leaves town, one spot has already been permanently changed.

In order to build the club in front of the Bellagio fountains, the resort cut down 40 mature trees that had been transplanted from the old Dunes golf course in the late 1990s. The trees have now been turned into wood chips and will be spread at local parks, further riling some of the locals.

“We weren’t really well informed about what was actually going to happen to our city,” Harhay said. “Even though we’re locals and everybody says we don’t go down to the Strip, it’s still our Strip. When we found out they cut down the trees in front of the Bellagio and changed that whole area, it hurt a little bit. It was kind of a shell shock.”

But despite all the potential hassles and any perceived negativity, Harhay struck a welcoming note when asked if he had a message for F1 fans who will soon arrive for one of the most-hyped motorsports races in history.

“Come to Vegas and spend your money,” he said. “Don’t get me wrong — we love the economic impact.”

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