New economic development CEO arrives in casino-heavy Vegas

Las Vegas relies heavily on visitors traveling here to spend big eating, drinking, partying, gambling and going to shows and conventions to fuel the local economy.

And as a result, the region is prone to extreme ups and downs.

When people have money to burn, Las Vegas heats up, but when the national economy gets hit hard, Southern Nevada can end up on life support.

“When things are good, they’re really good; when things are bad, they’re really bad,” Bob Potts, then-deputy director of the Governor’s Office of Economic Development, told the Las Vegas Review-Journal in 2020 after the pandemic devastated the local economy.

Las Vegas’ unemployment rate was around 4 percent in early 2020. But in April 2020 — during the first full month of pandemic-related shutdowns, with the Strip a ghost town of closed resorts — the local jobless rate shot up to 34 percent, federal data shows.

The Las Vegas Global Economic Alliance is one of several regional authorities contracted by the state to fuel economic development in Nevada. This past June, the alliance named Danielle Casey as its new president and chief executive.

She’s had an extensive career in the business-booster business. Casey was previously president and CEO of the Albuquerque Regional Economic Alliance; executive vice president of the Greater Sacramento Economic Council; and economic development director for the city of Scottsdale, Arizona.

She also held high-level roles with the city of Maricopa, Arizona, and, before that, worked in the nonprofit industry.

Casey spoke with the Review-Journal in September about her new role, her new city, and the much smaller Las Vegas in her former home state of New Mexico. The interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Given that Albuquerque was the most recent city you worked in, does that economy have a decent mix of industries, or is it heavily reliant on one or two like Vegas?

If you talked to anybody in greater Albuquerque or New Mexico, they would also say they are focused on figuring out how to diversify their industries. When you look at New Mexico, a massive amount of their revenue is from oil and gas, but as things change with oil and gas, that can affect them dramatically. They also have a very large dependence on government jobs.

At least based on your initial impression, do you think the dependence on casinos and tourism here is greater than other cities’ dependence on one industry?

I’ve been having a lot of conversations with board members, partners and others. I see agreement with everyone that there needs to be diversification. I don’t see that we have full alignment and agreement — and this is the work I’m very excited to do, by the way — on how and what success looks like. If we just say we want to diversify the economy, we also have to realize that some of those high dependencies are some of our greatest assets. That’s what allows us to be an international destination that’s easier to get to than so many other places in the country. That’s a huge positive for businesses.

What happens in a lot of economic development organizations is that everybody has great intentions, and, as I like to call it, we chase a lot of squirrels. ‘Oh, that looks cool, somebody wants me to do this, we’re going to host this event, we’re going to go to this show.’ Is it all really driven to an outcome we’ve agreed upon? We’re going to go through that exercise deeply but quickly.

What do you think could help attract different types of companies to Southern Nevada? My impression is that ever since GOED was created in 2011, the main carrot has been tax breaks.

It’s quite common. Every economic development strategy you see, the goal is to be competitive. It’s not a lovely situation, but if other markets are offering tax incentives, the business decision will be driven by where they can be the most successful, and the cost of operations is a critical level of consideration.

But incentives don’t make a bad deal good for your community. I don’t think it’s responsible to throw out every incentive you possibly can and hope that you get there. You also have to analyze a company’s operations and know if what you’re offering is competitive. It may not be.

I’ve worked on projects where we had awesome tax incentives and other tools. But when you’re competing with free state land in a shovel-ready industrial park somewhere else, it doesn’t matter how good those incentives are because you can’t compete.

Have you ever been to Las Vegas, New Mexico, and besides the shared name, does it bear any resemblance to Las Vegas, Nevada?

I did not have the pleasure of spending any time there. I might have driven through it or by it. It is a unique and charming little city in a beautiful state. But when I told people I was moving to Las Vegas, no one thought I was moving to Las Vegas, New Mexico. They pretty much understood where I was going.

Contact Eli Segall at esegall@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0342.