Friday, Dec. 17, 1999 | 11:42 a.m.
Booming areas
Here are the 10 fastest-growing metropolitan areas in the United States, followed by their populations:
1. Las Vegas, 1.3 million
2. Laredo, Texas, 188,000
3. McAllen-Edinburg-Mission, Texas, 522,000
4. Boise, Idaho, 396,000
5. Naples, Fla., 199,000
6. Phoenix-Mesa, Ariz., 2.9 million
7. Austin-San Marcos, Texas, 1.1 million
8. Fayetteville-Springdale-Rogers, Ark., 273,000
9. Wilmington, N.C., 218,000
10. Provo-Orem, Utah, 336,000
Source: U.S. Census Bureau
The U.S. Census Bureau today confirmed that the Las Vegas region remains by far the fastest-growing metropolitan area in the country.
The rate of growth for the metro area, which includes Clark County and nearby areas in Arizona, was 55 percent between 1990 and 1998. The closest competitor was Laredo, Texas, with a growth rate of 41.2 percent over the same period.
The metropolitan region encompasses three counties -- Clark and Nye in Nevada, and Mohave County, Ariz.
The sources of the increase aren't broken out in the most recent Census Bureau report, but in previous estimates the bureau tracked an even greater increase in the Hispanic and Asian populations.
A report issued in September found that the number of people of Hispanic origin jumped an astonishing 139.4 percent since 1990, the government estimates. The number of Hispanics in Clark County alone was 198,473, according to the September estimate. That rate of growth was also the fastest of any metropolitan area in the country.
If the Hispanics in the county were counted as a single municipality, they would easily make up the second-largest city in the state.
People of Asian and Pacific Island heritage, both from overseas and migrants from other parts of the country, experienced a similar growth rate. From 1990 to 1998, the number of people with an Asian background more than doubled, from 27,014 to 59,085.
Although the area is growing in terms of diversity, plenty of the region's new residents aren't from far away. Many are coming from California, a look at the state Department of Motor Vehicles and Public Safety records shows.
More than a third -- 24,671 -- of the 71,625 out-of-town drivers licenses turned into the DMV in the first 11 months of the year came from Californians, by far the largest single source of new drivers.
Of the 10 fastest-growing metropolitan areas in the country, Las Vegas was second only to the Phoenix region in terms of actual population growth.
The Las Vegas region, with a 1998 estimated population of 1.3 million, gained about 470,000 people since 1990. The Phoenix region, with 2.9 million, gained about 690,000.
The top four regions for rate of growth in the country were all in the West.
The news didn't surprise local officials, either for the region or the Census Bureau.
"I think Nevada has been recognized as the fastest-growing state for some time, so it really doesn't surprise me," said David Hoggard, manager of the Las Vegas Census Bureau office.
"No surprise at all," agreed John Schlegel, director of Clark County Comprehensive Planning.
Schlegel said the economic growth in the region is what is driving the population boom, and that growth has been steady throughout the 1990s.
"It's really fueled by job growth ... but it is incredible," he added.
Schlegel also wasn't surprised that the fastest-growing areas are in the West.
"There's been a movement since World War II in population from the Northeast and Midwest to sunny locations," he said. "There's just been this continued migration from the older population centers to the newer ones in the West and South."
While Schlegel expects continued population growth for Southern Nevada, he expects the rate of growth to slow somewhat.
The only new large casino-resort on the near horizon in Las Vegas is the Aladdin. After that, no megaresorts are under construction or soon to break ground.
"That will slow the economy somewhat," he said. The established hotels, however, will continue to hire, he said.
"At least into 2000, the employment picture is looking pretty rosy," Schlegel said.
But not everything is rosy for the fast-growing region. Air pollution problems have prompted the threat of federal sanctions. Gridlock is beginning to remind many former Californians of the freeways they left behind.
And the cheap housing that attracted many people to the region may soon become more expensive and harder to find in the face of the huge population boom.
About 60,000 new people a year move to the Las Vegas area and building homes for all of them is getting increasingly difficult, said Terri Barber, deputy director of the Southern Nevada Home Builders Association.
"Particularly with the increased cost of land, it's getting quite difficult for us to keep housing affordable and keep building affordable subdivisions," she said.
While the flood of people has continued, the number of homebuilding companies actually has decreased, she said. Some smaller companies have been unable to compete because of the increased cost of land and the rising cost of complying with government regulations, Barber said.
The number of homes in the region grew 48 percent from 1990 to 1998, from 518,778 to 766,560, also the fastest-growing pace in the country. Most of those new homes have been built on the urban perimeter, in master-planned communities such as Summerlin and Green Valley.
But land for development on that outside edge is becoming harder to find; the federal agencies, such as the Bureau of Land Management, are increasingly reluctant to trade or sell their land off in the face of resistance from environmentalists and criticism for slack oversight in past decades.
And local developers themselves are changing the market: Increasingly, they are going after wealthier retirees. The growth of the planned resort community at Lake Las Vegas, for example, is designed to rival tony Scottsdale, Ariz.
That represents a distinct change from the Las Vegas of yesteryear, which welcomed mobile home communities of low- and fixed-income pensioners.
The Census Bureau itself is one of the agencies that has to overcome challenges presented by the rapid population growth.
Hoggard said the population boom means more work for bureau employees in Southern Nevada, who will soon fan out, clipboards in hand, to do the official count as part of the national 10-year census.
New residents, new roads and new addresses have to be canvassed as part of the job, he said.
"It means that we have our work cut out for us in terms of making sure we're up-to-date," Hoggard said.
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