Lessons from Orlando will help Las Vegas fill infrastructure gaps

By Robert Lang

Published Sunday, June 7, 2015 | 2 a.m.

Updated Sunday, June 7, 2015 | 10:47 a.m.

In 2013, the Las Vegas Metro Chamber of Commerce and UNLV’s Brookings Mountain West and the Lincy Institute decided to jointly study shortcomings in Southern Nevada’s educational, transportation and tourist infrastructure. To help do that, the Brookings/Lincy team compared our region to other metropolitan areas.

Our analysis found that Las Vegas best matches Orlando, Fla. The regions are the only two large U.S. metros built around tourism. In essence, Orlando is Las Vegas for kids. Yet, despite its origins as a collection of theme parks, Orlando quickly moved to fortify its larger tourist economy and diversify related industries. Orlando also directly competes with Las Vegas in one key area: conventions.

In the 1960s, Yale architecture professor Robert Venturi began a project he dubbed “Learning from Las Vegas.” The project focused on how non-Vegas-like cities could learn urban design from the Strip. We now see an opportunity for Las Vegas to learn from another city: Orlando. Specifically, we identified five infrastructures Orlando has that Las Vegas needs. They are a university-based allopathic (or M.D.-granting) medical school, a Carnegie-classified “Very High Research Activity” (RU/VH) university, complete interstate highway connections to all nearby major metropolitan areas, a rail transit system and a large-capacity stadium.

Robert Lang presented the analysis last year at Preview Las Vegas, the annual economic forecasting event sponsored by the Las Vegas Metro Chamber of Commerce. The chamber then expanded the theme in the February 2014 issue of Business Voice, in an article titled “Too close for comfort: Why Orlando is squeezing us, and how we can do better.” The piece detailed the five key infrastructures as crucial factors in the recovery and long-term growth of the Southern Nevada economy. Translated to Las Vegas, the assets are: a UNLV medical school, UNLV as an RU/VH university, Interstate 11 from Las Vegas to Phoenix, a light-rail system comparable to Salt Lake City or Phoenix and a 60,000-seat stadium that can host major events. At Preview, Lang recommended that the five infrastructures need to be either built or in process by 2020.

For the past 18 months the chamber has led with a consistent and clear voice, ensuring Nevada leaders understand the value the five infrastructures hold for our economy and quality of life. The chamber has worked with political leaders at the national and state level to secure two of these assets: Interstate 11 and the UNLV School of Medicine.

Consider the chamber’s work on the medical school. It is easy to forget that just two years ago, the idea was described by some as “too expensive,” “impractical” or even, in the case of one observer, “laughable” and “preposterous.” Then, in late 2013, the Lincy Institute released a study by consulting firm Tripp/Umbach that showed how a medical school at UNLV would have a tremendous economic impact on Southern Nevada.

Kristin McMillan, the chamber’s president and CEO, immediately weighed in on the Lincy report, trumpeting that the school would expand our health care sector, create significant jobs and generate new taxes to support the entire state, adding more than $1.1 billion per year in gross metropolitan product and 8,000 new jobs. In fact, the tax revenue generated from the UNLV medical school would exceed the state’s cost in meeting the school’s operating budget by 2030, she said.

The chamber’s support was the tipping point in the UNLV medical school debate. Certainly, many business leaders and elected officials supported the project both before and after the chamber officially took a position, but it’s hard to underestimate the power of having the state’s largest business group lend its credibility to what was at first a very fragile proposition.

The Las Vegas Metro Chamber continued to support the UNLV medical school throughout the 2015 Nevada Legislature. In fact, the chamber insisted that full funding for the UNLV School of Medicine was a condition for the organization’s endorsement of Gov. Brian Sandoval’s budget.

With Interstate 11 now under construction and the UNLV School of Medicine set to open in 2017, we now turn our attention to the three remaining infrastructures.

The Regional Transportation Commission (RTC) is leading on developing light-rail proposals and released its Transportation Investment Business Plan last week. Brookings Mountain West is planning an event on light rail in partnership with the RTC, the details of which will soon be announced.

UNLV has a plan in place to achieve Carnegie RU/VH status by 2025. If the new medical mchool succeeds as hoped, that date may come sooner.

As for a large-capacity stadium, its status remains the most indeterminate at the moment. Yet, as Las Vegas maintains an expanding events economy, preliminary discussions are underway to advance a stadium. One basic fact remains: Las Vegas generates more than enough tourist tax dollars to suggest that an adoption of Orlando’s public investment model would produce the most sophisticated and profitable stadium in the nation.

So, of the five infrastructures, we have two down and three to go. We can reasonably expect that all five assets will be completed or in process by 2020. Brookings/Lincy looks forward to continued partnership with the Las Vegas Metro Chamber and other organizations to secure the assets Las Vegas needs to expand tourism, diversify the economy and improve the quality of life in Southern Nevada.

Robert Lang is the executive director of the Brookings Mountain West and Lincy Institute at UNLV and is also a professor of public affairs in the Greenspun College of Urban Affairs.