LAS VEGAS (KTNV) — Las Vegas is a city defined by light — neon, LEDs, and millions of bulbs that make the Strip one of the most recognizable skylines in the world.
Behind some of those lights is a local company that has quietly transformed how the city glows.
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LED Connection, co-owned by Theresa Fette and David X. Williams, has replaced legacy lighting systems at some of the Strip's most iconic properties — cutting energy costs and modernizing the way Las Vegas looks at night.
"Dave and I now own it all by ourselves, and I'm just really proud of what he's built. He just really is a genius in engineering. And over this time, what I've tried to bring to the table is my experience in scaling, technology, people, relationships, and etc., to help him build a company that we can both be proud of," Fette said.
Fette is an attorney and serial entrepreneur who has built and sold several companies before LED Connection. Her partner, Williams, whose background is in construction, has a knack for solving problems others can't.
"I knew nothing about LED at the time. I heard about it but knew nothing, and I'm one that can dive into a subject and just self-teach myself whatever and just dove into the technology, learned about it, flew to China and other countries and met with factories, learned about the technology, dug into the engineering," Williams said.
Their big break came at MGM Grand.
The challenge was the property's signature green lighting. The old technology used more than 500 fixtures, and the manufacturer had stopped making the green lights. Others had tried to find an LED solution and failed.
"So we figured it out finally. We took that project, it was over 500 fixtures, and we ended up doing the same project with 151 fixtures. So we significantly reduced the fixture count as well as their energy bill," Williams said.
The MGM Grand project cut power use by about 73 percent.
LED Connection's work then moved to other MGM properties. At the Luxor, the company did the pyramid's runner beams. At Mandalay Bay and the W — formerly the Delano — the company replaced gold neon with LED technology, then went a step further.
"We had presented doing a pixel chasing so they can run different designs and colors on the building. They do some words, they scroll on there, or different patterns and colors, so it's really cool," Williams said.
That means the exteriors can now shift colors, run patterns, and display moving words. The Mandalay Bay project required almost a million feet of cabling.
The company's work also includes casino floors, interior lighting, wash lights, and the Mandalay Bay Convention Center.
"You'll get to see like the chasing lights outside on Mandalay Bay, the green lights on the MGM — real things that when you look at the Las Vegas Strip, you see LED Connection even though you don't know you see it," Fette said.
LED Connection's reach now extends well beyond Las Vegas. The company has completed projects in every state, including work for Kroger parking lots across the country and projects with Walmart.
"We've done the parking lot lights for Kroger across the country or we've gone to Walmart and shown them some of the innovative things that Dave is working on," Fette said.
One of the company's newest hotel projects is more than 2,000 miles from Las Vegas.
"Another big project that we just completed that makes it look like that old style neon is the Borgata property in Atlantic City. So the whole exterior of that building is a purple neon and we just completed that a couple of weeks ago," Williams said.
The company calls it "LED neon."
LED Connection says other MGM projects have produced energy cost reductions between 50 and 80 percent — a significant savings for the gaming giant.
This story was reported on-air by a journalist and has been converted to this platform with the assistance of AI. Our editorial team verifies all reporting on all platforms for fairness and accuracy.
