Urban growth in Las vegas

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USAToday 12/26/00

Las Vegas is taking homeowners downtown

By John Ritter

LAS VEGAS — Here in the nation's fastest growing big city, new homes rise so fast the edge where desert meets subdivision is practically a moving target. In a metro area that attracts more than 7,000 newcomers and creates 2,700 new jobs every month, the residential fringes spread quicker than a slot machine gobbles quarters. But in this free-wheeling fantasyland where not just the action but also the economy revolve around gambling and the famous Strip of casino hotels, Las Vegas is looking inward to a decidedly more mundane task: revitalizing a seedy and neglected downtown.

A key part of the strategy is to capture a piece of the region's tremendous residential demand and build housing downtown. That's almost an oxymoron in the West, but it's a trend taking hold in Phoenix, Albuquerque, Houston, Denver, Dallas, San Antonio, Salt Lake City and other Western cities.

"Downtown Las Vegas is the core of an apple," Mayor Oscar Goodman says. "When the core begins to rot, the apple rots, the bushel rots, and it has a reverberating effect throughout the entire community."

Cities across the West are learning from eastern cities such as Baltimore, Boston and Jacksonville, Fla., that bringing back tired downtowns takes more than stores and office buildings. It takes people living downtown — shopping, eating and seeking entertainment on the same streets where they work.

What's startling about this renaissance is how different it is from earlier building patterns. The West's downtowns were very much products of postwar population booms and urban thinking of the 1940s, '50s and '60s. Downtowns were places people went to work. The land was restricted to what was thought to be its most profitable use: offices. That meant come 5 o'clock, the streets emptied.

"It was known as highest and best use," says Robert Lang, urban research director at the Fannie Mae Foundation, a national non-profit community development group. "So they ruthlessly zoned and ripped the heart out of these places and built office and commercial development almost exclusively."

The coin of the new urbanism is mixed use — housing, retail, entertainment and offices all downtown — and it's catching on in the West. The goal is a downtown that's lively and nocturnal.

"Now maybe the highest and best use is making a downtown a real place again," Lang says.

What also is at play is a misconception that Las Vegas and other Western cities are the epitome of sprawl. For the most part, they don't sprawl in the classic, leapfrog sense, with development sprouting up miles beyond the city limits, forcing roads and services to come out to it. In the West, the relative scarcity of water is a constraint.

Many Western cities are growing extraordinarily fast, but that's not true sprawl. Rolf Pendall, a Cornell University urban planning professor, found in a study of recent building trends that the 12 metro areas with the highest densities, those with the most people per new urbanized acre, were all in the West. Those sprawling the most were in the Midwest and East, including Cleveland, Louisville, Cincinnati, St. Louis, Boston, Detroit, Nashville, Philadelphia and Atlanta.

Las Vegas had the third-densest new development among the 100 most populous metro areas. Only Stockton, Calif., and Honolulu ranked higher on the density scale. From 1992 through 1997, the West and South had about the same population growth, but the South used four times as much land, Pendall says. Western cities only seem to be sprawling, he says, because of the "monotony and unendingness of the development."

"And you can see the development in the West, but in the East there's all these trees so it doesn't look like sprawl from the ground."

Because Western cities are used to denser development, they'll adapt to even higher density requirements in the center city. "Developers and landowners get an expectation that density is going to be pretty high," says Pendall. "Landowners want more money for their land, so developers have a very strong incentive to keep building at those high densities."

'City within a city'

Examples abound across the Western USA:

Denver revitalized lower downtown, called LoDo, around Union Station and Coors Field with lofts, offices and trendy restaurants. The city is starting work at the old Stapleton International Airport.

Phoenix has put up housing and shopping plazas around its new stadium and arena.

More housing is considered certain around Albuquerque's popular Old Town.

High-rise towers containing hundreds of units that are going up around downtown Houston.

A commuter light-rail line in Salt Lake City enhances the potential for more housing in a downtown that virtually shuts down at night.

In Las Vegas, core of a 1.4-million metro area, a 90,000 square-foot office tower, the first in 25 years, is going up downtown. A theater-shopping complex and museum are planned; work on two upscale apartment complexes is about to start; and Fremont Street, the older gambling district off the Strip, got a facelift a few years ago. The city, like many others, is in hot pursuit of dot-com companies.

Goodman pressed the City Council to acquire 71 vacant acres next to downtown from Union Pacific. The land will be the cornerstone of the resurgence, he says. A stadium, performing arts center, mixed retail-residential structures, a science center, more offices, perhaps even more casinos are possibilities.

"This land won't be developed unless it's going to be a very special city within a city," Goodman says. "If it's not something unique, I'm not interested. Not on my watch."

Enticing people to live downtown won't be easy. Homelessness, prostitution and a perception that crime is a problem all have to be overcome, city officials admit. Boom times have bypassed older, poorer neighborhoods on the east and west sides of downtown.

"I think it's a tough deal in the urban core," says Mark Fine, developer of two planned communities in Las Vegas. "You can move into some of our older neighborhoods near the core for half the price you can move into the suburbs, and people still aren't moving there — even to decent neighborhoods."

"They're worried about security. They're worried about the schools. They're worried about what's going on in adjacent neighborhoods. And they'd rather pay a premium to be in a planned community," he says.

The city hasn't shared equally in the region's gaming growth because the Strip is located outside, in unincorporated Clark County.

"Downtown is our slum, our downtrodden area," he says. "People feel uncomfortable there. You worry about being mugged, and on the Strip you don't feel that way."

Compared with many other markets, the Las Vegas suburbs remain affordable: 20,000 new houses were built in the past year, at a median price of $155,000.

Developers assembling land face the hurdle of most downtown redevelopment schemes: property owners with exaggerated views of their land's worth. "It's overvalued, so it will be very difficult to make residential pencil out without going up multi-stories," says Debra March, a UNLV business professor.

No 'fake little Disney version'

Most cities forge public-private development partnerships and make use of grants, state bond financing, low-income tax credits and other inducements.

"All those things take time, which you normally don't have in standard suburban deals," says Terry Farris, a professor of city and regional planning at Clemson University in South Carolina.

"It doesn't have to be that big a population," Lang says. "Just enough people so it doesn't look like it's a fake little Disney version of a downtown, but a place people live in, an actual neighborhood with a sense of community."

"There's always a leap of faith when you first start out," Lang says.

Goodman is after that critical mass in Las Vegas, but he knows it will take time to jell. He has the support of the City Council, a citizens redevelopment panel and neighborhood groups. But the powers that be on the Strip have kept him at arm's length.

"What has always made Las Vegas great is we never stopped growing," Goodman says. "Once we stop growing, we're not going to be the great place that we've become used to being."



-- Lars (larsguy@yahoo.com), December 26, 2000

Answers

Here's an amusing anecdote ..... when I first moved here back in March, I asked SO where the "business district" was located. He replied, "The Strip". I said, "No, really, where's the business district; you know, where all the industry is, etc.". He replied, "No, REALLY, The Strip".

I don't know where the author thinks 2700 new jobs are created every month, but I don't think it's here.

This town (it is NOT a "city"; it is a collection of suburbs built around casinos) seriously needs to come up to speed in "industry". While high-tech has been slowly moving in, the salaries are NOT where they should be. Since just about everything in this town is tone-set by the casinos, and they pay crappy salaries, any other industry that sets up shop here follows suit.

If they don't bring the salaries up to where they should be, this place will be a ghost town before long; like so many others in this state. Oscar may attract the "dot-coms", but the "dot-coms" aren't going to attract the talent unless they buck the traditional "salary system".

I can understand Oscar's enthusiasm (it's what he's paid to do), but he just doesn't see the reality of the situation. It's a lot like Hollywood -- people flock there because they are Going to Be Stars. They flock here because they are Going to Win Big. It's about the same result.

While 7000 a month may indeed move here, he never mentions the 2000-3000 a month who move OUT of here. Yeah, it's growing (sprawling, really), but industry isn't in tandem with the population.

That can only get worse unless basic things (like appropriate salary structures) change.

-- Patricia (PatriciaS@lasvegas.com), December 27, 2000.


...everything in this town is tone-set by the casinos, and they pay crappy salaries,

"Crappy" salaries? Perhaps by New York standards, Patricia. You might have a different opinion however, when you factor in the rather generous benefits packages the major Hotel-Casinos offer. It should also be taken into account that the majority of casino employees receive a large percentage of their income (over and above their salary) in the form of tips. A dealer or cocktail waitress for example, might average 3, 4 or 5 times more money in tips than what they are paid in salary.

I realize this doesn't really address the point you were making, but I just didn't want you to have the wrong impression about the income of casino employees. On the whole, they do quite well. (On top of everything else, they get to eat free. Not a bad benefit eh?)

-- CD (costavike@hotmail.com), December 27, 2000.


I don't know where the author thinks 2700 new jobs are created every month, but I don't think it's here.

You might find this article interesting, Patricia...

From the Las Vegas Sun

Most employment sectors are growing, Schwer [director of UNLV's Business and Economic Research Center] says, but gaming and hotel jobs are the core to the increases. The total increase between October 1998 and October 1999 was 44,000 jobs -- about one-third of those are directly in the hotels and casinos of the region.

-- (costavike@hotmail.com), December 27, 2000.


I don't know anything about LV. I would think its situation is unique. But the trend towards inner city renewal and liveability is a reality almost everywhere. I see it as exciting and hopeful. Even in provincial Indy the downtown has gone from a lifeless deserted place (at night) to a lively, stimulating area of new buildings, parks, a canal, gentrified older neighborhoods, new condos, apartments and entertainment venues.

I know this is happening almost everywhere. The biggest "problem" that I see is that poor people are being priced out of neigborhoods that were formerly shunned.

-- Lars (larsguy@yahoo.com), December 27, 2000.


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