People visit exhibits Thursday during Preview Las Vegas 2007 at the Thomas & Mack Center. Hundreds of local residents attended the annual economic forecasting event. Photos by Jane Kalinowsky.
At Preview Las Vegas 2007 on Thursday at the Thomas & Mack Center, Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority President Rossi Ralenkotter said the country needs to better promote tourism.
At Preview Las Vegas 2007 on Thursday at the Thomas & Mack Center, Applied Analysis principal Jeremy Aguero put housing-market stability atop his list of the top 10 trends facing the Southern Nevada economy.
Richard Lee's signature farewell at his presentations on Las Vegas' rapid-fire development has always been about how he wakes up every morning trying to figure out how to get his share of the pie.
Lee, public relations director for First American Title Co. of Nevada, said during Thursday's Preview Las Vegas 2007 at the Thomas & Mack Center that the pie is almost gone now.
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In 1950, there were 6,000 acres developed in Las Vegas. Now it's more than 150,000. The valley had 40,000 acres gobbled up from 1990 to 2000 and another 40,000 acres from 2000 to 2006.
"If you're going to get a piece of the pie in the future, you're going to have to do something different. You're going to have to make the pie bigger," Lee said as he showed an apple pie from Marie Callender's to about 1,800 people in the audience for the business and economic forecast presented by the Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce and Nevada Development Authority. "Outside the box, in the bank."
New thinking is creating new value, new dollars and new opportunities, he said.
Developers are trying to "stretch" the Strip. In addition to building up, they're building out, creating the south Strip and west Strip. The Fremont Strip is pushing eastward.
The south Strip runs from the Town Square regional lifestyle center that's scheduled to open in the fall to One Las Vegas high-rise condo towers and mid-rise condos such as Manhattan, Boca Raton, Loft 5 and now Brickwater.
The west Strip is developing along Dean Martin Drive, formerly Industrial Road, where gaming and hotel companies are posturing for position from Palace Station to Russell Road, Lee said.
"A $2 million condo next to I-15 on Industrial Road? Those are people thinking outside the box," Lee said in reference to Panorama Towers.
No gaming property will be built as a stand-alone hotel on the Strip, he said. Everything will have a residential component the way the $7 billion CityCenter by MGM Mirage and the $4 billion Echelon Place by Boyd Gaming Corp. do.
"CityCenter is a tsunami wiping out everything in its path until it gets completely absorbed. You'd better have something unique to compete," he said.
The "new boys in town" include Starwood's W Hotel, Morgans Hard Rock Hotel, Planet Hollywood's Aladdin and Turnberry's Fontainebleau. Lee called Fontainebleau, which is under construction, the "best-kept secret" on the Strip.
Jeremy Aguero, principal of Applied Analysis, a Las Vegas-based research firm, gave a summary of the top 10 emerging trends. The No. 1 trend is housing-market stability, and the number to remember is 21,146, Aguero said. That's how many homes are on the market for sale, two times what he'd like to see. Fifty-five percent of the homes for sale are either unoccupied or rented, he said.
Aguero, who was a member of the governor's task force on tax policy that recommended the ill-fated gross receipts tax, said Nevada has one of the nation's most favorable tax climates, climbing from sixth in 2004 to fourth in 2006. Neighboring California was ranked 45th.
"Who's better? Places like Wyoming, South Dakota and Alaska. Any other questions?" he said.
Business investment was No. 7 on Aguero's list. The key number there is $33 billion. That's the amount of construction for Strip projects that have announced completion dates. And $12.8 billion is planned for projects without announced completion dates.
Beyond casinos, commercial permit activity is showing $1.9 billion, and more than 16 million square feet of industrial, office and retail development is in the pipeline. Office vacancy rates climbing to 12 percent are going to be a short-run issue, Aguero said.
Another concern is transportation capacity. McCarran International is running up against its capacity of 53 million passengers a year and with 30,000 to 40,000 new hotel rooms coming on line, we're going to have to find more ways to bring people in, Aguero said.
"Our two main arteries are McCarran and Interstate 15, and like most middle-aged men, there's blockage in those arteries," he said. "We need some kind of transportation angioplasty."
Rossi Ralenkotter, president and chief executive officer of the Las Vegas Visitors and Convention Authority, said international travel to the United States has dropped 20 percent since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and the country needs to do a better job of promoting tourism.
"The Travel Industry of America said we have an image problem. We're seen as one of the least-friendly countries to visit," he said. "Competition, competition, competition. It all comes down to competition. We're all competing for that tourist dollar, that convention dollar. We will put together a marketing plan to compete."
