A pedestrian was hospitalized with serious injuries and a driver was arrested on felony counts after a hit-and-run crash involving eight cars Saturday morning near UNLV, Metro Police said.
Cover Story: Hey, big spenders: Corporate giving in Las Vegas got hit particularly hard in the Great Recession. But giving back is actually helping Las Vegas businesses.
By Buck Wargo
Darcy Neighbors knows first hand that philanthropy is not only good for the soul, but great for the bottom line. In business, giving back is a selfish act—and that’s OK. All credible studies show that businesses that actively donate to charitable causes increase their brand awareness, boost employee morale and fatten their balance sheets.
Visionaries are only as good as the people who pay attention to them. As we look to 2010 — that in itself is a mouthful to a fellow who, as a very young man, used to wonder what kind of spaceships we would use to take us to the moon in the 21st century — it is helpful to pay attention to what our community leaders think will happen in the next 10 years.
It is hard to imagine in these heady days as we enter the third decade of the 21st century how grim conditions in Las Vegas were just a decade ago. After a half-century boom, the region found itself in its biggest bust. Sure Las Vegas had seen bad times before, but this downturn seemed to challenge its whole business model.
I think that Nevada is going to remain — Las Vegas is going to remain — the destination resort of the world. There will be new transportation measures to get people to Las Vegas — by then we’ll have a high-speed train between Las Vegas and Southern California.
In the coming decade our primary water source, the Colorado River, will have more years with less water than years with more water. Still, I’m optimistic that Las Vegas will be ready for whatever nature throws our way. If the drought gets very severe in the Colorado River Basin, water should become a national topic, and we’ll be talking about retooling the nation’s water supply as a whole.
We’re at a crossroads, economically and certainly environmentally. This is the point where we have a choice: Do we go forward with more responsible and efficient use of our resources while diversifying the economy? Or do we wait for the economy to rebound and simply pick up where we left off?
My concern is that a lot of people still think we’re just going to rebound and do it all over again in the next 10 years. But we’re going to have to adjust because population growth is going to be flat or negative. That means weaning ourselves off this growth, off this need for mass-production suburban homes and big-box stores.
I’m not hopeful for 2020. Some think CityCenter is the start of a return to the heyday, but those people are living in the past. By 2020, the casino business will no longer be the state’s cash cow for a number of reasons, not the least of which being that the number of competitors in the legalized gambling business just keeps growing.
We’re definitely going to see more bankruptcies in the next year or two and then it will taper off. I don’t think we have finished the bad news when it comes to commercial property. You’re going to have a lot fewer people standing at the end of this cycle.
I’m a very optimistic person. I think Las Vegas will come back, but not with the kind of growth we’ve had over the past 20 years. In any place that has steroid growth you ultimately have to adapt to a more realistic growth pattern, and frankly you get real muscle. You’re not as bloated and you’re more efficient. I think that will happen here.
One of the most noticeable changes that will occur in the next 10 years will be the increase in the number of Latino children in the educational system. Right now, about 40 percent of the students in Clark County schools are Latino and we’re going to have continued growth of Hispanics to the point where they will be the majority.
Our most urgent priorities over the next decade are to address the things we’ve identified with the Brookings Institution as our highest-need areas for the state: economic diversification, building our human capital and creating an infrastructure that supports those.
Las Vegas will be a Mecca for health care and it will happen before 2020. I just came back from spending time in Cleveland, where the excitement was the annual board of directors and trustees meeting. There, the Ruvo Center was officially donated to the Cleveland Clinic. We all know that Cleveland Clinic is going to expand its facilities in Las Vegas.
We would hope West Las Vegas would be more like Summerlin. We want to have businesses, black-owned businesses, restaurants and even shopping centers in our remote area. We want a community that is viable, that is livable, and one where any person can live without fear.
In 20 years, Las Vegas will be an enhanced three-shift town or it will be nothing. Imagine what would happen if Las Vegas suddenly became an 8-to-5 town. With that pressure on the infrastructure, we would drown ourselves. The real future of Las Vegas is its three shifts. I think we exploit that.
Nevada needs to start looking further ahead. If I had the opportunity to help draft a blueprint, here’s what I’d do: The Legislature, with extensive statewide input, would develop a long-term public education plan that sets goals for five and 10 years from now. The plan would include funding for appropriately carrying out those goals, monitoring and supporting schools and correction remedies for failing schools.
By the year 2020, the hospitality and tourism market will no longer represent our top industry. Health care will likely surpass it in size. Nevada will again be the leader in terms of population growth, but it won’t be Clark County leading the surge. Investments in solar and renewable energy in rural parts of the state will mean smaller communities growing at a more substantial pace than Southern Nevada.
By 2020, solar and alternative-energy-related businesses will surpass gaming and mining as the state’s growth industries. Nevada currently produces 100 megawatts of solar energy. Over the next 10 years that will multiply by 1,000 percent.
My hope is that over the next 10 years we will become more enlightened about education. I’ve been very disappointed for a very long time about our direction. We have teachers and principals, dedicated education professionals, who have tried their hardest to deliver quality education to our children, but they haven’t had the leadership and resources they need to be successful.
I think you are going to see major changes in Las Vegas over the next decade. Our concept of what the suburbs are is going to change dramatically. The limited supply of land will dictate that by 2020. We are an island, and it is surrounded by Bureau of Land Management and Native American land. There is little place to expand.
I bet three-quarters of a billion dollars that things will be good on the Las Vegas Strip by 2020, so I hope I’m right. I figure the Strip is going to continue to be the place in Las Vegas, and there’s only one Las Vegas so people from around the world will continue to come here.
UFC will be the biggest sport in the world by 2020. People were saying I was a lunatic 10 years ago when we first got this going, but the stuff we’re working on right now on so many levels is mind-boggling.
Futurists are always the first to tell you anything can happen. But the likelihood of change generally follows one of three paths. The first track is the status quo. The second potential track is downward. The third future option is the track I support — the path upward.
By 2020 we’ll see major transportation improvements to meet the needs of this community as we continue to grow, with the Regional Transportation Commission leading the way. Interstate 15 will get a lot more congested because of growth.
One of downtown’s highlights will be the Smith Center. History tells us how important world-class facilities like these have on the culture of the city’s residents. So it’s not just going to be a fabulous building, it’s going to change lives. Culture and the arts change lives. What’s happening here will forever change our children.
We can’t start 2010 soon enough. It’s the year, we’re told, when we can begin to pull ourselves up, dust ourselves off and begin our recovery from a terrible few years that brought us to our knees.