{"id":6588,"date":"2013-11-26T16:33:16","date_gmt":"2013-11-26T16:33:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/forumarchives.tmsites.net\/index.php\/2013\/11\/26\/reviving-las-vegas-with-less-sin-more-city\/"},"modified":"2013-11-26T16:33:16","modified_gmt":"2013-11-26T16:33:16","slug":"reviving-las-vegas-with-less-sin-more-city","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/forumarchives.tmsites.net\/index.php\/2013\/11\/26\/reviving-las-vegas-with-less-sin-more-city\/","title":{"rendered":"Reviving Las Vegas With Less Sin, More City"},"content":{"rendered":"


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\n\tLas Vegas, long known for its gambling-fueled revenue model, took a big hit in the financial crisis. The city is now trying to remake itself as more than a one-economy town.<\/span><\/p>\n

\tIn Nevada, there is no income tax. And if you’ve ever been to Las Vegas then you know why \u2014 they don’t need one.<\/p>\n

\tMore than 30 million tourists a year stumble down the Las Vegas Strip, and many of those tourists come to gamble, leaving behind a ridiculous amount of money. For decades, business boomed.<\/p>\n

\tBut the financial collapse hit Las Vegas hard. Despite what people had been saying for years, the gaming industry is not recession-proof. According to the Center for Gaming Research at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, casino revenues on the Vegas strip dropped for 22 straight months during the last recession, and the city became the unofficial foreclosure capital of the U.S.<\/p>\n

\tThe city is now taking steps to claw its way back. In doing so, it may emerge as more than a one-economy town.<\/p>\n

\tThe New Nightlife<\/p>\n

\tTo be clear, gambling is not going anywhere. It is still what drives Las Vegas. But 2008 was a wake-up call.<\/p>\n

\tRick Lax, a writer who lives and breathes Las Vegas, tells NPR’s Arun Rath that the city discovered that it was, in fact, not immune from the economic downturn.<\/p>\n

\t"It turns out, when people don’t have money, in fact they do not have money to come out to Las Vegas and gamble," he says. "And it really sunk in once President Obama … used as an example of fiscal irresponsibility coming to Vegas on a bender, and that’s when we knew we were in bad shape."<\/p>\n

\tLas Vegas has remade itself before, becoming a bit more family-friendly in the ’90s. But a more recent trend is the trading in of billboards for penny slots and buffets in exchange for ones advertising the latest nightclubs \u2014 and there are a lot of them.<\/p>\n

\t"The club scene has boomed in the past five years," Lax says. "We have just been opening up mega-club after mega-club. And now if you look at the list of the highest money-making clubs in the United States, if you look at that Top 10 list, seven of them are right here in Las Vegas."<\/p>\n

\tOne of the newest clubs is called Light, which opened at the Mandalay Bay Hotel and Casino in May. Its $25 million cost can be seen in the massive walls of LED screens that illuminate the room, lasers, strobes and fog cannons. And if that wasn’t enough of a spectacle, Light is a partnership with Cirque du Soleil, a company that has taken Las Vegas by storm since its first show there in 1993.<\/p>\n

\tIn Light, the Cirque du Soleil acrobats and performers swing from the rafters above club-goers.<\/p>\n

\t"So all this is happening while the club’s going on," says Andy Masi, CEO of Las Vegas hospitality company The Light Group. "You’re part of the experience."<\/p>\n

\tMasi says party-goers pay anything from $30 to get in the door to $10,000 to get a prime table and hear the world-famous DJs these clubs attract, like Kaskade and Tiesto.<\/p>\n

\t"It’s part of the culture right now," Masi says. "This is a movement, and these DJs who are creating this music … they’re composers, they are creating music. And it’s really something that has inspired a massive generation."<\/p>\n

\tThe clubs in Las Vegas are getting bigger and bigger, and making huge amounts of money that isn’t gambling. Masi says that it is all part of the market shift in the city.<\/p>\n

\t"Gen X and Gen Y are really more into entertainment and dining and seeing shows and staying in great hotels than they are into gaming," he says. "[But] gaming is still a big part of Las Vegas … I don’t think you can have one without the other."<\/p>\n

\tCounting On Collision<\/p>\n

\tA couple of miles away, one entrepreneur is trying to bring the spirit of a party to a corporation. Tony Hsieh, CEO of online retailer Zappos, wants to transform Las Vegas.<\/p>\n

\tZappos has its headquarters in downtown Vegas (away from the Strip), but Hsieh’s goals are broader. In 2009, he sold the company to Amazon for $1.2 billion, and with some of that money he started the Downtown Project.<\/p>\n

\tIn one way, it’s a venture capital firm, trying to attract new industries. But in other ways, it’s much more ambitious. Hsieh wants to rethink city planning and imagines how a well-designed city can breed innovation.<\/p>\n

\tThe secret, he says, is forcing more collaboration. It’s something he likes to call "collisions." One example, Hsieh says, is at Zappos’ new headquarters housed in what used to be Las Vegas City Hall. The company shut down a skybridge in order to force employees out into the street and into the community when coming to work.<\/p>\n

\t"Research has shown that most innovation actually comes from something outside your industry or outside your area of expertise being combined with your own," he says. "So on the city level, it’s really important for people from all different backgrounds and industries to collide and talk to each other. That’s where a lot of the great ideas come from."<\/p>\n

\tHsieh has already started forcing a few collisions by funding companies like CrowdHall \u2014 a site that hosts Q&A sessions where visitors vote on the best questions \u2014 and Fluencr, a site that rethinks the celebrity endorsement and gets companies to offer everyday people endorsements instead.<\/p>\n

\tHsieh’s Downtown Project, which is separate from Zappos, divides its $350 million budget between investing in small business, tech companies, education, arts, music and real estate.<\/p>\n

\t"In the past year, we’ve relocated about 60 companies from other states or even countries actually to downtown Vegas," he says.<\/p>\n

\tHsieh says there are a few different goals of the project. One is to have everything people need to live, work and play within walking distance; another is to make downtown Vegas the most community-focused large city in the world \u2014 in probably the place most people would least expect it.<\/p>\n

\tA third goal is to make Las Vegas the co-working and co-learning capital of the world. Co-working is where small companies, especially tech startups, share the same physical space. The idea started with some startups in San Francisco.<\/p>\n

\t"What they found was they would start overhearing each other’s conversations, and that would result in these serendipitous interactions and they’d start collaborating," he says. "And it actually drove a lot of innovation and productivity."<\/p>\n

\tDollar Signs In The Sky<\/p>\n

\tFor other new sources of revenue, Las Vegas is looking to the skies. Next month, the Federal Aviation Administration will decide on a new test site for unmanned aerial vehicles, better known as drones. Nevada is vying for that honor.<\/p>\n

\tRelated NPR Stories<\/p>\n

\tThe 55-story High Roller, which will be the world’s largest Ferris wheel, is scheduled to open in early 2014.
\n\tThe Two-Way
\n\tWorld’s Largest Ferris Wheel Takes Shape In Las Vegas
\n\tLos Angeles saw a dramatic boom in growth after the construction of the Los Angeles Aqueduct in 1913. The system delivers water from the Owens River in the Eastern Sierra Nevada Mountains to the city.
\n\tAround the Nation
\n\tHow An Aqueduct Turned Los Angeles Into A ‘Garden Of Eden’
\n\t"We also have the largest concentration of unmanned aerial vehicle pilots in the world," says Tom Wilczek, who fronts the effort for the governor’s office.<\/p>\n

\tWilczek says the Department of Defense did drone research here in the early 1990s, and military pilots fly drones from both Nellis Air Force Base in Las Vegas, and Creech, about an hour away. But the FAA isn’t looking to do more military research; it’s interested in the commercial possibilities for drones.<\/p>\n

\t"The very first applications we’re going to see are agricultural and then law enforcement \u2014 more of a public safety context," Wilczek says. "Somewhere in the future, you may have packages coming from a UPS or FedEx transited on aircraft that are remotely piloted."<\/p>\n

\tThat new industry could mean billions. Wilczek says commercial drones could earn about $90 billion in global revenue by 2025, a fraction of which he hopes will come Nevada’s way.<\/p>\n

\t"It’s going to be enormous for our economy. The governor’s made this one of his top economic development platforms," he says.<\/p>\n

\tCasinos Will Always Rule<\/p>\n

\tWhile Las Vegas appears to be branching out from its tried-and-true model, writer Rick Lax wants you to know that in Las Vegas, the casino is still king.<\/p>\n

\t"We’ve got this giant, Chinese-themed Resorts World Casino that’s going be opening up soon," he says, "so I think come three or four years, that’s going to be the place to be and people will be saying at that point, ‘Wow, Vegas really turned itself around.’ "<\/p>\n

\tMost of the high-earning dance clubs are all owned by casinos, as well as plenty of other non-gambling attractions like shows, amusement parks, mini-aquariums and zoos.<\/p>\n

\tAs Vegas comes roaring back, Lax says the casinos will still be on top.<\/p>\n

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Replies:<\/h3>\n
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Posted by:<\/strong> TommyC on November 27, 2013, 12:49 am<\/p>\n

Interesting read.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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