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Jul. 12, 2007
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Report says LV growing too fast

Magazine questions city's talent as well

By JENNIFER ROBISON
REVIEW-JOURNAL
TOO MUCH GROWTH?

Fast Company's "Too Fast" list tallies up the global cities that the magazine's editors believe are growing too fast for their own good. Here are the five cities the publication's editors say have more downside than upside in coming years:

Las Vegas. Fast Company calls Las Vegas "an environmental pileup in the making," and asks whether local casinos can "find enough water to fill all those pools."

Cairo, Egypt. Corruption is pushing entrepreneurs out of the city in search of new business opportunities. Almaty, Kazakhstan. A construction boom can't outweigh the town's crime, corruption, nuclear waste and lack of culture.

Greenwich, Conn. This hedge-fund center is one financial "meltdown" away from economic troubles. Shenzhen, China. "Think Vegas, except in China," Fast Company's editors wrote. "Home prices have doubled in four years."

Las Vegas has earned countless plaudits from national magazines for its warp-speed economic growth.

But one publication says Southern Nevada is expanding too quickly for its own good.

The July/August issue of Fast Company, a magazine that covers emerging trends in business, gives Las Vegas low marks for its rapid growth, asserting that an economic emphasis on low-skill labor will combine with ecological disaster to rein in the city's future success.

Fast Company's editors call Las Vegas "an environmental pileup in the making," and they ask whether local casinos can "find enough water to fill all those pools."

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    • For businesses considering investing in Las Vegas, the magazine concludes, the risks outweigh the potential benefits.

    "We worry about the environmental train wreck that could be approaching, with the sheer toll of population growth and building," said Keith Hammonds, executive editor of Fast Company. "But the more important question for us is about talent. If you have rapid population growth and business growth without a corresponding expansion of talent and the capacity to attract more talent, you're headed for a future with low income and low quality of life."

    Fast Company's analysis hinges on three factors: technology, measured partly by the number of patents issued and the number of high-tech employers in a market; talent, or the share of a city's population employed in high-skill, "creative-class" sectors such as engineering, science, publishing and academia; and tolerance, a diversity measure that considers indicators such as an area's racial integration, percentage of gays, share of foreign-born residents and proportion of artists, musicians and entertainers.

    Las Vegas fared well on two fronts, ranking No. 46 out of 330 cities in technology and No. 69 in tolerance.

    Talent, however, is another story.

    For the number of residents employed in knowledge-based jobs that require a university education, Las Vegas ranked No. 325.

    What's more, Las Vegas ranked No. 50 out of 50 cities on Fast Company's City Vitals index, which looks at the percentage of people ages 25 to 34 who have four-year degrees. The portion of college-degreed young people in Las Vegas is 2.5 percent, compared with 7.9 percent in No. 1 Raleigh-Durham, N.C., and 7.1 percent in No. 2 Austin, Texas.

    "The talent base in Las Vegas is not college-educated, it's not young and it's stuck in low-income jobs," Hammonds said. "That is not a recipe for economic sustainability. At the same time, you're getting remarkable population growth and a building boom. We worry about the quality of that growth if it's not supported by expansion of the talent base."

    Local gaming executives and business leaders say Fast Company's forecast of Las Vegas' prospects doesn't hold water.

    "Twenty years ago we were answering the same question (about whether the city would run dry)," said Pat Mulroy, general manager of the Southern Nevada Water Authority. "This is cyclical. Every two or three years, somebody says Las Vegas is going to run out of water."

    The water authority is working to procure water supplies beyond Southern Nevada's Colorado River allotment. The authority plans to build 285 miles of pipeline across east Nevada to carry water to Las Vegas; its officials have requested a January hearing seeking access to more than 11.3 billion gallons of groundwater a year from Lincoln County to serve nearly 120,000 homes, and the state engineer in April granted the authority the right to tap almost 20 billion gallons of groundwater annually in White Pine County, 250 miles north of Las Vegas.

    Besides, Mulroy said, Las Vegas gets it water from the same basic sources as Phoenix, Salt Lake City, Los Angeles and other Southwestern cities, and any water issues that hit Southern Nevada will affect all the region's markets.

    Gaming executives also note that the resort sector isn't a major local water user -- it consumes 6.7 percent of Southern Nevada's water, while residents use 59 percent of the area's water, according to numbers from the Colorado River Water Users Association.

    "The companies that operate here, and their shareholders, still see Las Vegas as a great investment opportunity," said Bill Bible, president of the Nevada Resort Association. "They see a bright future, and the believe the growth and the positive regulatory and tax climate will continue."

    They're also keenly sensitive to environmental issues in general, said Gordon Absher, a spokesman for MGM Mirage.

    MGM Mirage's 18 million-square-foot CityCenter, under construction on the Strip, will be the largest project in the nation built to the standards of the U.S. Green Building Council's Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design program. Also deploying green-construction methods on the Strip are Boyd Gaming Corp., which is building Echelon on the former Stardust site, and Wynn Resorts Ltd., which is building Encore at Wynn Las Vegas.

    "Some of the most aggressive environmental steps in areas such as green building are being taken right here in Las Vegas," Absher said.

    As for the creative class in Las Vegas, it's thriving, say local professionals.

    Cara Roberts, a spokeswoman for the Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce, said Las Vegas is drawing the world's top chefs and restaurateurs, as well as legions of entrepreneurs launching small businesses and tech companies. It also has a nascent alternative-energy sector, as investors flock to Nevada for its solar and geothermal potential.

    "We're a city founded by problem-solvers who have, in a very creative, enterprising and innovative way, built an international city in very short amount of time," Roberts said. "Las Vegas attracts people whose hard work and ingenuity will continue to drive our economy."

    Fast Company doesn't completely snub the Southwest United States. The magazine lauds Tucson, Ariz., as a "startup hub," and calls Salt Lake City an "urban innovator" where officials are cultivating "a more open, human feel that attracts newcomers -- among them traffic-weary Californians -- to the city center."

    But some of the magazine's criteria, including obscure indicators such as the number of ethnic restaurants or the ratio of live-music fans to cable-television subscribers, raised eyebrows.

    A more useful measure of a city's economic vitality would be its job market, Bible said.

    "Instead of worrying about cable-TV subscribers, they should be more concerned about the ratio of employed to unemployed, and the opportunities to find work," Bible said. "A lot of people see Las Vegas as a place of great opportunity, and a place with meaningful, well-paying jobs that have good benefits."



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    fairieswearboots wrote on August 08, 2007 10:20 AM: i think everyone of you should leave vegas so i can buy my ranch home for $50k! pack up the chevy and git along lil doggies! hey, maybe you can all move to california, smoke weed and live on venice beach! thats a really cool farout place to live, homes there are going for $1m and only a block away from getting mugged, raped and beaten!! adios fools...


    newbie wrote on August 06, 2007 10:34 AM: is there anything positive about vegas? los angeles is a craphole with many more low-skilled and no-skilled workers, too many college graduates chasing too few jobs, so whats the difference with vegas. people just like to complain, it feels better than saying anything positive. i moved here from L.A. recently and i love it. i have a decent job in finance and a new home that i couldnt afford in L.A. imagine, an 1100 sq ft 1960's home in the ghetto going for $475,000...who wants to live there!? i also commute less than an hour. be happy that vegas hasnt caught up with L.A.!


    Mr. Disappointed wrote on August 05, 2007 10:07 AM: If I had read this article and done some research before moving to Las Vegas, I wouldn't have moved here. I'm now forced to work a job that is well below my professional skills (I'm an out of work public librarian) and educational level (I have a graduate degree) to meet some of my financial obligations. Most jobs here pay too little, offer very few benefits and have no room for advancement. Unfortunately, when professional positions do open, particularly in my field, competition can be fierce. In more well-educated communities, and I happen to come from one – the Bay Area in Northern California, this isn't the case. Good paying jobs that do require a good education are usually plentiful in these type of communities. So, I'm now planning to leave Las Vegas and move to another area that appreciates well-educated folks.


    alan berk wrote on July 23, 2007 06:50 AM: With 24,000 homes empty we could accomadate 50,to 100,000 people without adding any further burden to the infrastructure!

    The building boom on the strip should keep the building trades busy for several years and those are not usually minimum wage jobs!

    if peope were smart and lived within a half hour drive to their job- las vegans would save millions of dollars in transportation costs!

    Housing costs- Why buy an over-priced and over hyped new house when there are thousands of existing house already for sale.

    Why not move back from the suburbs and all of that stupid commuting and re-vitalize older neighborhoods!

    Why the idea of living in the burbs was better then living in the city was one of the stupidest ideas ever foisted on americans!




    Vegas Bob wrote on July 21, 2007 10:28 PM: Sorry, the proper spelling is "Soylent Green"...and fyi the famous line from the 1973 movie was "Soylent Green is People"...so in the case of meeting demands of population growth...we will be consumning each other's "piss and vinegar" before the corporate/political bigshots give up the money machine$$$$!


    Vegas Bob wrote on July 21, 2007 09:57 PM: I agree with Mr. Greed....if water to support this gambling industry ever became a real issue...the powers that be will either steal it, suck it out from some other state's allocation via political manipulation or in the fianl analysis...like the movie Solent Green...we all will be drinking each other's waste water seweage!!! Hell... we maybe doing that already!


    Las vegas Greed master wrote on July 21, 2007 09:52 PM: Ok boys and girls...it is not about water...it is not about talent...its about $$$$$$ MONEY$$$$$....gambling, greed, and Grifters have been Clark County's mainstay...always will...the rest, kids, schools, quality of life and big wages...mean nothing to the beast that the world feeds with millions and millions of visitors to the casinos and "Sin City"....all the rest is an illusion and cover for the dopes, whales, high rollers drawn to the one center that has always looked the other way when it came to integrity...just look at current local politics, dishonest developers, big international money, crooked city hall and county Govt officals...Get the picture you suckers!


    David wrote on July 17, 2007 10:51 AM: Las Vegas has had the same problem for several years now. They always seem to have an abundance of jobs paying in the lower payscale and very few well paying jobs. I left Vegas several years ago due to this. Our company was taken over by corporate and all the staff was replaced by new people. There were very few jobs paying a decent salary. Most jobs were offering just over minimum wage and some just under $10 per hour. Can not raise a family on that, especially with housing costs so high. The city needs to attract more Tech companies and also stress keeping work with vendors in the city. Much work is shipped out of the city and the state which aids in the erosion of workforce.


    Timothy K. Bunn Sr. wrote on July 13, 2007 08:04 PM: After the war pullout in Iraq is done,then you'll see bigtime inflation.
    Remember what happened a few years after the Vietnam pullout?


    Doug Webster wrote on July 12, 2007 10:52 AM: I dont't get it. What's new? Most long time residents like me have been saying that for years. I thought so as a teen 33 years ago. I'm sure earlier residents said that around 1905.


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