Wednesday, April 23, 2003
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

Official bullish on Las Vegas' future

Somer Hollingsworth Calls Las Vegas `21st century city' at annual Perspective forum

In 10 years, Las Vegas won't be compared with Los Angeles, San Francisco, Phoenix, Dallas and other regional cities.

Those cities will be comparing themselves with Las Vegas, Somer Hollingsworth, president and chief executive of Nevada Development Authority, said Tuesday at Las Vegas Perspective 2003, an economic forum sponsored in part by the Las Vegas Review-Journal.

"Las Vegas is a 21st-century city," Hollingsworth told 800 business people at Cashman Center Theatre. "They're going to be saying, `We want to be like Las Vegas.'"

Hollingsworth said Nevada's favorable tax structure, warm climate and relatively low cost of living are crucial recruitment tools for his agency, which is responsible for diversifying Southern Nevada's economy by bringing in businesses with quality, high-paying jobs.

There's more. Forbes-Milken Institute ranked Las Vegas No. 3 among 200 metropolitan areas in 2002 as the best place to do business.

Why? Superior telecommunications infrastructure, a dependable energy base, McCarran International Airport and, surprisingly, a skilled work force, Hollingsworth said.

"We have 900,000 people in an extremely deep work force, a 24-hour work force," he said. "We compete with Phoenix, Dallas, Houston -- they can't find that 24-hour work force. You've got to pay them $2 to $3 more and then they don't show up."

Hollingsworth said the authority brought 3,514 new jobs to Southern Nevada in 2001-2002, and that included three flat months following Sept. 11, 2001. In 2000-2001, the authority created 6,876 new jobs with 62 new companies coming here and six expansions.

The average wage of workers at companies recruited by the authority has grown from $9.90 an hour in 1994-95 to $13.08 in 1998-99 and $20.99 in 2001-2002.

"That's a heck of a jump and it says a lot about this community," Hollingsworth said.

Much of the new business is coming to Nevada from California, where we've got a friend in Gov. Gray Davis, Hollingsworth said.

Dimitrios Stavros came to Las Vegas from Los Angeles last year to open his second La Isla uniform shop at 967 E. Sahara Ave.

He said higher real estate prices, higher workers' compensation costs and higher taxes in California made it more feasible to purchase his 11,000-square-foot store with 100 feet of frontage on Sahara than to lease less space anywhere in the Los Angeles area.

"The red tape you have to go through in L.A., the bureaucracy you have to go through is unbelievable," Stavros said. "It's just very difficult as a business climate. You've got the city and the state running out of money and wondering where to get it and right away they go after businesses."

Hollingsworth said the percentage of nongaming jobs has increased at a higher rate than gaming jobs over the past 10 to 15 years, and that the trickle-down effect from the massive layoffs by the gaming industry after Sept. 11, 2001, proves economic diversification is working.