Tony Hsieh doesn’t really like sports, but he loves llamas and community gatherings. So once a month during baseball season, the CEO of the online shoe retailer Zappos holds a company-sponsored parade led by a llama named Cusco. The marchers get free baseball caps and noisemakers as they make the trek from Las Vegas’s Fremont Street to nearby Cashman Field.
For Hsieh, 39, the cheerful walk through a rough patch of the city is just one part of a very calculated attempt to revitalize downtown Las Vegas through an urban renewal effort called the Downtown Project, which he is bankrolling with $350 million of his own money.
To read the original article: Rolling the Dice on Las Vegas | MIT Technology Review
