Dr. Karen Chapple, Director of the School of Cities at the University of Toronto, speaks during a UNLV Center for Business and Economic Research event at UNLV Tuesday, Nov. 7, 2023.
Wednesday, Nov. 8, 2023 | 2 a.m.
Las Vegas’ downtown district is leading its peers in other North American cities when it comes to bouncing back from pandemic lows, which experts attribute to various jobs, transit, food and accommodations and other strong services.
Business, industry and government leaders gathered Tuesday at the Strip View Pavilion at the Thomas & Mack Center for UNLV’s Center for Business and Economic Research Fall Economic Outlook, where they heard about economic trends in Southern Nevada and nationwide, as well as how Las Vegas landed the No. 1 spot on the continent for downtown recovery from COVID-19.
“Here’s where Las Vegas wins,” said Karen Chapple, director of the School of Cities at the University of Toronto, the keynote speaker at the event Tuesday morning. “So, you’re strong, you come back faster, if you have good hotels and food services — well guess what? Las Vegas is doing really well there.”
Las Vegas’ downtown, which Chapple said was defined for research purposes as the areas with the highest employment density, also recovered over 100% from the pandemic because its jobs are not concentrated in professional sectors like law, accounting or consulting that have primarily moved to a remote-work format, a reliance on cars and relatively low commute times.
While downtown Las Vegas is currently quite strong, however, Chapple said she had some concerns about its resilience.
To ensure that its economic recovery continues in the short term, she said, Las Vegas needs to facilitate access to loans for small businesses, host major events like those upcoming with Formula One and the Super Bowl, and accept that work-from-home and hybrid workplaces are here to stay in some capacity.
Additionally, it’s important that a downtown area is filled with public and private activity.
“First of all, we need to keep our downtowns alive,” Chapple said. “We need to make sure we have activity there, whether that’s having events or whether it’s putting tenants in vacant storefronts. Pop ups, art exhibits — (how) about using some office space for entrepreneurship and incubators?”
Las Vegas Councilman Brian Knudsen said during the event that a strong and vibrant downtown corridor — with investments in schools, research opportunities transit and more — would attract jobs, which ultimately would bring in more revenue. He pointed specifically at health care as an industry for targeted growth here in Las Vegas.
“And so as a local government thinking about the expansion of downtown, thinking about transit-oriented development, thinking about who’s going to utilize those services in the downtown core, you have to really rethink everything that we’ve done over the last 20 years,” Knudsen said. “Because it’s drastically changing, and it’s changing faster than you can keep up with.”
Las Vegas needs to invest in diversifying its economy and land uses, the building conversion process, ensuring that its downtown is inclusive and affordable and prioritizing education, particularly at UNLV, to grow its workforce and foster entrepreneurship, Chapple said.
“In the long term, there’s a lot of work to be done to diversify economies — and this is both downtown and in the region,” she said. “And this is where, again, the long-term resilience of Las Vegas comes into question because … recession after recession, Las Vegas is at the bottom. You hurt more than any other city in North America.”
The event, which included other economic forecasts for the year ahead from UNLV and industry experts, also shed a light on the need to expand transit options to strengthen Las Vegas’ downtown. Not everyone has a car or wants to drive to get around, Chapple said, so transit is key for economic development. David Swallow, deputy CEO of the Regional Transportation Commission of Southern Nevada, echoed Chapple’s sentiment. Transit in many forms is fundamental to any city, Swallow said.
What’s important is developing an environment in which people can use multiple forms of transit, including walking, to get where they need to go, and it is ultimately safe, secure, accessible and effective, he said.
“In most cities that have evolved around the world, you’ll see a robust transit system that was really, really evolved around people having to walk everywhere,” Swallow said. “We evolved around the assumption everybody has access to a car — which they don’t. So, we know that transit is instrumental to mobility for our community.”
