The opening of $2.7 billion Wynn Las Vegas brought more people to the north end of the Strip and contributed to a Las Vegas visitor count that was on pace for another record. Photo by K.M. Cannon. New homes popped up everywhere throughout Las Vegas in 2005, including the Huntington Community in the southwest valley. Photo by Gary Thompson. A man walks off of the casino barge in November at the Isle of Capri in Biloxi, Miss. Gulf Coast casinos were ravaged by Hurricane Katrina. Photo by John Locher. Luxury condos were the rage in Las Vegas in 2005, but many of the high-rises may never be built. Photo by Gary Thompson. Tilman Fertitta of Landry's Restaurants speaks to the Gaming Control Board about the Golden Nugget. Photo by Gary Thompson. Boyd Gaming Corp. plans to announce the redevelopment of the Stardust on the north end of the Strip. Photo by K.M. Cannon.

Call 2005 the year of up for business in Las Vegas.

Tourism was up. October data from the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority, the most current tally, show 32.4 million visitors came to Las Vegas in 2005, up 2.5 percent from a year earlier.

Home appreciation was up, too, rising 12 percent year-over-year through November, the Greater Las Vegas Association of Realtors reported. Home Builders Research, meanwhile, said the median price of a new home in Las Vegas rose to $295,057 in October, an 8.1 percent increase from October 2004.

Las Vegas' already high profile went up a little higher in April, when developer Steve Wynn opened his $2.7 billion Wynn Las Vegas hotel-casino, and in December, when Boyd Gaming Corp. opened the $600 million South Coast.

And the prices Southern Nevadans paid for gasoline and electricity went up, too, driven higher by rising prices for crude oil and natural gas.

2005 was also notable for things that developers plan to put up, such as the W and Las Ramblas, two high-profile high-rise condominium-hotel projects, and the Cosmopolitan, a high-rise condo-hotel complex that will include a casino, restaurants and entertainment venues.

And there were things that never went up at all, such as the Krystal Sands and Aqua Blue condo-hotel projects. Both died on their way from drawing board to dirt.

Here are the top 10 local business stories of 2005:

1. RECORD TOURISM CONTINUES

The challenges were myriad, the opposition substantial.

But in 2005, Las Vegas again proved it's a powerful player in the global travel industry.

And it will take something supersubstantial to slow this city's tourism engine going forward.

From high fuel prices and hurricanes in the Gulf Coast to terror attacks overseas and the much-hyped bird flu scare, troublesome headlines dominated the news in 2005.

Nothing, however, could curtail what's expected to become another record year for travelers visiting Las Vegas.

Through October, the most current tally available, the city's 32.4 million visitor count was up 2.5 percent from 2004's record-setting performance.

Las Vegas ended 2004 with nearly 37.4 million guests, and was on pace to end 2005 with well over 38 million visitors.

Thanks to new air service and additional gates, McCarran International Airport was on pace to handle nearly 44.5 million travelers last year, which would be up 3 million from 2004's record passenger count.

With the opening of Wynn Las Vegas and South Coast and expansions at existing resorts, Las Vegas also ended last year with 2,700 more hotel rooms than it had Dec. 31, 2004. Yet occupancy levels held steady.

With so many people in the state's largest city, Nevada's statewide casino win topped the $1 billion mark for the first time ever in March.

That threshold was topped three more times in 2005.

Likewise, Las Vegas' convention industry continued to rise, thanks to new management at Mandalay Bay, as well as the July debut of the World Market Center furniture showcase in downtown Las Vegas.

2. STORM-TOSSED GAMING

The Gulf Coast hurricane season was unkind to the gaming industry.

When the storms finally subsided, several casinos in Louisiana and Mississippi were either destroyed or heavily damaged. Thousands of jobs, millions of dollars in gaming revenue and taxes were lost to a storm surge.

Las Vegas-based gaming companies Harrah's Entertainment, MGM Mirage, Pinnacle Entertainment and Boyd Gaming Corp. lost casinos or had casinos damaged by Hurricane Katrina on Aug. 29 and Hurricane Rita on Sept. 24.

The slot-machine industry will be working overtime this year to replace some 19,000 games that were destroyed by the storms.

Harrah's took the brunt of the hurricanes. More than 9,000 employees were left jobless when the hurricanes destroyed four riverboat-style floating casinos in the Mississippi communities of Biloxi and Gulfport and Lake Charles, La.

Harrah's New Orleans, Louisiana's largest casino, was not damaged by Hurricane Katrina but flooding that devastated the city will keep the casino closed at least until February.

Harrah's paid the wages and benefits of its hurricane displaced work force for 90 days, but laid off its employees by the end of November. Harrah's went as far as to pull out of the local United Way campaign to concentrate on helping its Gulf coast workers.

MGM Mirage's Beau Rivage in Biloxi, Mississippi's largest casino, suffered storm damage that will keep it closed for repairs until the end of 2006. Like Harrah's, MGM Mirage paid its 3,100 Beau Rivage employees for 90 days, but handed out pink slips in early December.

Nowhere were the hurricanes' effects felt more than in coastal Mississippi. The state's casino industry had ranked behind Nevada and New Jersey as the largest producer of gaming revenue.

But in a matter of hours, Hurricane Katrina destroyed 13 casinos, wiping out 17,000 jobs and eliminating an industry that had revenue of $1.2 billion in 2004. With the casinos closed, Mississippi tax coffers were short by $500,000 a day.

By December, three Biloxi casinos had planned to reopen. Mississippi lawmakers also changed gaming regulations, allowing the coastal casinos to rebuild 800 feet away from the water's edge, rather than over water.

3.CONDO CRAZE OR CONDO CRAZY?

High-rise luxury condominiums are changing the Las Vegas skyline as a number of projects began construction in 2005, including Sky Las Vegas, Trump International and Allure.

They are among some 70 towers and 50,000 units that are either under construction or planned for Las Vegas, though real estate experts predict that only 25 percent to perhaps half of the projects will come to fruition.

A few projects have already crumbled.

Florida developer Freddie Schinz pulled the rug on Krystal Sands, which was planned at the former site of the Algiers motel on the Strip. Turnberry Associates bought the 3-acre parcel for $86 million.

Next to fall was Aqua Blue, a condo-hotel project that was going to be built where the Super 8 motel stands on Koval Lane. It was hyped as a partnership with former NBA star Michael Jordan.

Most recently, Ivana Las Vegas, a 923-foot tower planned at Las Vegas Boulevard and Sahara Avenue, has been scrapped and the 2.2-acre parcel is listed for sale at $49 million.

Developers are blaming construction costs and a slowdown in sales, an indication that the high-rise market here may be getting saturated, for the failed projects.

"Developers are currently experiencing a fallout rate of 20 percent to 45 percent of their sales," Ivana developer Victor Altomare said. "Coming up with a 20 percent deposit, $150,000 on average in Vegas, a lot of buyers are reluctant to have $150,000 tied up."

Several projects are near completion, including Metropolis on Desert Inn Road near Paradise Road, SoHo Lofts on Las Vegas Boulevard at Hoover Avenue and Panorama Towers on Dean Martin Drive, south of Harmon Avenue. Turnberry is progressing with its fourth and final tower at Turnberry Place and started a new project, Turnberry Towers, on Karen Avenue.

High-profile condo projects announced in 2005 included the W Hotel by Starwood, Las Ramblas by Las Vegas-based Centra Properties and Related Cos. and a hotel-condo expansion of the Hard Rock Hotel.

4. HOUSING MARKET STABILIZES

The laws of physics say that what goes up, must come down, and that certainly applies to the Las Vegas housing market.

Appreciation rates that soared in 2004 returned to earth this year, though they still registered a 12 percent year-over-year increase through November, to the Greater Las Vegas Association of Realtors reports.

The median price of 2,441 homes sold in November was $310,000, the group reported.

Las Vegans who bought their homes five years ago have seen values double; those who bought in the second half of 2004 haven't been so lucky.

Despite gloomy reports of a "housing bubble" across the United States, Las Vegas continues to register steadily increasing home prices and sales, largely a reflection of significant employment and population growth in Southern Nevada.

New-home sales totaled 30,684 through October, Las Vegas-based Home Builders Research reported. That's up nearly 30 percent from the same month a year ago. Resales have trailed off, topping 50,000 through October, down by 5,456 from a year ago.

The median price of a new home rose to $295,057, an 8.1 percent increase from October 2004. However, it dipped slightly from $297,555 in September.

Resale prices followed the same trend. The $280,000 median in October was down $5,000 from the month prior, the first drop in six months, but still up from $252,000 a year ago.

Challenges facing home builders in the coming year include labor shortages, a lack of affordable homes and higher land and raw material prices.

5. THE STRIP EVOLVES

The opening of Wynn Las Vegas opened a year of major expansion on the Strip's northern end.

Local casino developer Steve Wynn got the ball rolling April 28 with the opening of his $2.7 billion hotel-casino, which ended five years of design, construction and mystery.

Meanwhile, across Sands Avenue from Wynn Las Vegas, Las Vegas Sands broke ground for the Palazzo, a $1.6 billion, 3,000-room resort adjacent to The Venetian.

When completed, the combined Palazzo, Venetian and Sands Expo and Convention Center, all to be owned by Las Vegas Sands, will be the largest resort and hotel complex in the world, with more than 7,000 hotel rooms and suites.

Fontainebleau Resorts, a privately held company founded by Jeff Soffer, a principal with high-rise condominium developer Turnberry Associates, announced plans for a 4,000-room Fontainebleau Las Vegas hotel-casino, a $1.5 million development that will be built on the Strip just north of the Riviera on 25 acres that once held the El Rancho and Algiers casinos.

Across the Strip from these projects, New York developer Donald Trump broke ground in July for the $500 million, 64-story Trump International Hotel and Tower, a nongaming complex behind the New Frontier across from the Fashion Show mall.

Trump said he plans to add an identical 64-story tower to the site.

The first tower would place Trump's name in lights high above Las Vegas, within walking distance of the Strip and near Wynn Las Vegas.

The year closed with Boyd Gaming Corp., the world's third-largest gaming company, planning to announce the redevelopment of the Stardust site as a major destination resort complex.

The resort-driven Strip also is shifting focus. The planned construction of major mixed-use developments like Project CityCenter and the Cosmopolitan will bring new condo towers, retail space, hotels and entertainment to the Strip in high-density urban centers.

6.FUEL COSTS

SURGE

Electric and gas customers in Southern Nevada started feeling the pinch of high natural gas prices this year.

It was bad enough that the typical residential customer was paying Nevada Power Co. an average of $127.39 monthly. But on a year-round basis, the typical residential customer of Southwest Gas Corp. was paying $57.32 a month for water heating, cooking and space heating.

Look for higher bills in the future, partly because of Hurricane Katrina.

The hurricane damaged natural gas wells and processing plants in Gulf Coast states, adding yet another upward pressure on the cost of the fuel.

Electricity rates are rising, because Nevada Power gets most of its electricity from natural gas-fired power plants.

Add it up and the typical residential consumer is paying about $875 more each year for electricity and gas than six years ago.

The federal Energy Information Administration in mid-December calculated that residential natural gas prices will average $12.75 per thousand cubic feet this year. The rates at Southwest Gas and Nevada Power don't reflect the latest increases in natural gas, because there is a regulatory lag between filing for rate increases and rates being increased.

Nevada Power says it intends to get more power from renewable energy sources such as wind and solar power, and from coal. Using these alternatives would reduce the utility's reliance on high-priced gas, but analysts say it will take years to make many of those changes.

The high price of power may remind some of the Western energy crisis of 2001 and 2002, but wholesale power prices have not returned to the levels reached then.

During the crisis, Enron Corp. canceled its power supply deliveries to Nevada Power of Las Vegas and Sierra Pacific Power Co. if Reno, because bond-rating agencies reduced the utilities to junk-bond level, grounds for contract termination. Then, Enron sued the utilities for $330 million, the difference between the prices quoted in its contracts with the utilities and market prices.

The two utilities settled that lawsuit late this year, pending federal regulators' approval. If they win approval, the utilities will seek to raise rates to cover the cost of settling the dispute, analysts say.

7.DOWNTOWN SHAKE-UPS

It has been a year of upheaval in the downtown gaming market.

In September, seven months after first announcing its plan to buy the Golden Nugget, Houston-based Landry's Restaurants took over downtown's largest casino in a $345 million transaction. The company, which had more than $1 billion in revenue in 2004 from its nationwide chain of restaurants, immediately said it wanted to expand the casino by adding a hotel tower and various amenities.

The Landry's takeover of the Golden Nugget, which ended the yearlong reign of the Poster Financial Group, might have spurred gaming interest downtown, state gaming regulators said. In October, for the first time in seven months, downtown casinos showed an increase in collective gaming revenue, reporting a gaming win of $60.7 million, a jump of 4.8 percent from $57.9 million a year earlier.

By the end of December, Navegante Group, a company managed by veteran gaming executive Larry Woolf, was expected to take over as the operator of the Plaza, Gold Spike, Las Vegas Club and Western Hotel. The hotels are owned by Barrick Gaming Investments and the Tamares Group, companies that are in litigation.

Like Poster Financial, which said it would bring crowds and excitement back to downtown when it first took over the Golden Nugget, Barrick had made boastful predictions about reviving the downtown market. Navegante's impending takeover of the four downtown hotel-casinos seemed to end those boasts, 15 months after the Barrick bought the properties.

In early December, the Henry Brent Co., owners of the Lady Luck, announced plans to renovate downtown's third-largest casino. But the news came at a cost; the company said it would close the Lady Luck for about a year starting Feb. 12 and 684 workers would lose their jobs.

Still, Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman called the Lady Luck plans "bittersweet."

He said other casinos had expressed interest in adding rooms and expanding their downtown footprints.

"We've had some very good news recently downtown, and I think people are starting to buy into our vision," Goodman said.

8. LIFE AFTER THE MERGERS

Two megamergers, the largest in gaming history, effectively put most Strip hotel-casino units in the hands of MGM Mirage and Harrah's Entertainment and set the tone for the center Strip's future development.

MGM Mirage and Mandalay Resort Group completed $7.9 billion their merger in June, creating a new company with about $7 billion in revenue and 70,000 employees.

The buyout briefly established the world's largest gaming company, which controls a majority of the hotel rooms and about 40 percent of the slot machines on the Strip.

A month later, Harrah's Entertainment bought Caesars Entertainment for $9.4 billion, making it the largest casino company with $8.8 billion in annual revenue and 40,000 employees.

Questions remain about possible job cuts as the two new casino giants consolidate and redevelop.

Harrah's, for example, bought Bourbon Street, a small casino off the Strip, in March and closed it Oct. 31 to help pave the way for its redevelopment of the block northeast of the intersection at Flamingo Road and the Strip.

As part of the same plans, Harrah's also bought the Imperial Palace in August for $370 million. The company said the hotel-casino is a prime candidate for demolition and redevelopment.

The 2,640-room Imperial Palace, between Harrah's and the Flamingo on the east side of the Strip and across the street from Caesars Palace, sits on 18.5 acres and Harrah's a host of development opportunities.

With 150 undeveloped acres under its belt, MGM Mirage decided to focus on building Project CityCenter, a $6 billion, mixed-use Strip development on the 66-acre site between Bellagio and Monte Carlo. It will include two, 60-story glass towers, along with a 4,000-room hotel-casino and condos and is scheduled to open in 2009.

The megamergers may also force smaller companies to focus more exclusively on locals or to exploit certain niches.

And the megamergers are interesting companies such as Colony Capital and Columbia Sussex in building businesses from assets that are cast off by the giants as they consolidate.

9. LAS VEGAS BRANDING EXPANDS

From network prime time and cable television to movie theaters and magazine covers, images of this city's bright lights and 24-hour action occupied a worldwide stage in 2005.

The public's seemingly insatiable appetite for all-things Vegas was fed through feature films including Sandra Bullock's "Miss Congeniality 2: Armed and Fabulous" and the Keira Knightley biopic "Domino," which included an exploding Stratosphere tower.

Television viewers continued to watch surveillance-themed "Las Vegas" on NBC and "CSI: Crime Scene Investigation" on CBS, as well as countless poker telecasts, led by ESPN's coverage of the World Series of Poker.

The "Today" show broadcast live from Wynn Las Vegas in the spring, while Public Broadcasting Service cast its dice with this fall's airing of "Las Vegas: An Unconventional History" episode of its acclaimed "American Experience" series.

The Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority's popular -- and legally contested -- "What happens here, stays here" ads were also extended and expanded to new U.S. markets. Even President Bush chimed in on the catchphrase.

The convention authority also pushed to link the Las Vegas brand with several popular sporting events, most notably this summer's successful bid to bring the National Basketball Association's All-Star Weekend here in 2007.

10.

LOCALS ONLY

When it opened in December 2001, Station Casinos' Green Valley Ranch Resort made headlines for its $300 million price.

But Station is outdoing itself with the 850-room Red Rock Resort in Summerlin, an under-construction project with a development cost just shy of $1 billion.

Red Rock Resort, along with the new $600 million, 660-room South Coast at the southern end of the Strip, heralded a newer, more upscale age in locals casino development in 2005.

High job growth and housing appreciation are partly behind the new offerings, said Brian Gordon, a principal in research company Applied Analysis.

Local housing appreciation in recent years has created about $18 billion in paper wealth among Las Vegans, Gordon said. That, in turn, has created a wealth effect -- consumer confidence that has fomented increased discretionary spending. Also, as homeowners sell out and move to new homes, equity is freed for spending.

"Residents' personal balance sheets are much better now than they were two years ago," Gordon said.

Demographics have also driven the demand for luxe locals casinos.

The area surrounding Red Rock Resort includes affluent master plans such as Summerlin, the Lakes and Peccole Ranch, where Gordon said above-average housing densities and incomes make for "what is probably the strongest demographic area in Southern Nevada."

And the South Coast is near Southern Highlands and a cluster of pricey midrise condominium developments near the Strip's Southern end. Gordon predicted the South Coast would also draw on the visitor market, given its Las Vegas Boulevard location.

With those demographic shifts, the current standard in locals gaming calls for high-end restaurants, spas and shopping. But Gordon said not every locals casino to come would be so upscale.

"There really are limited locations for that type of investment to make financial sense," he said.