LAS VEGAS - Dueling centers chronicling the history of the mob are planned for Las Vegas, and it seems almost certain that someone is going to get hurt. Well, feelings anyway.

“I am not the least bit worried about them,” Mayor Oscar B. Goodman said of the potential competition to the Las Vegas Museum of Organized Crime and Law Enforcement, a city-sponsored project . That museum is set to open next March in the old downtown federal courthouse, the site of Senate hearings on the mob in 1950 .

“They are no competition because we are the real thing,” said Mr. Goodman, a former defense lawyer for reputed Mafia figures. “Forget about it.”

But the rival, which involves the daughter of the famed Chicago mob boss Sam Giancana, is promising a collection of mob memorabilia in the Tropicana casino on the Las Vegas Strip.

“Our experience will be very different from theirs,” said Carolyn Farkas, the spokeswoman for the museum, the Las Vegas Mob Experience. “Theirs is more a law enforcement accounting; for us it is more a personal view.”

For much of the middle of the last century, organized crime ruled the Strip, developing and managing an array of casinos. Federal prosecutors put an end to their reign in the 1980s. The city determined its historical relationship to organized crime ? and the role the courthouse played in it ? made the site a perfect fit. “It came from the soil of this building,” said Nancy Deaner, the city’s cultural affairs manager.

The museum will have three stories and nearly 1,600 square meters of exhibits, including an interactive courtroom in which visitors can get finger printed. It will also include the brick wall from the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre (it was removed brick by brick and put in storage but will be constructed, bullet marks and all, Ms. Deaner said), roughly 700 objects and extensive exhibits on law enforcement efforts against the Mafia.

At the same time, Eagle Group Holdings - working with Antoinette McConnell, the 74-year-old daughter of Mr. Giancana - is to open the Las Vegas Mob Experience at the end of the year.

The Mob Experience would include theme park-style exhibits, including one called “Final Fate” in which a visitor “gets made or gets whacked,” according to the description.

Mrs. McConnell, whose late husband was a lawyer who represented organized crime figures, said: “The Mafia is something that people can’t get enough of. For some people it is like an addiction.”


By JENNIFER STEINHAUER