Little Did We Know...

As I mentioned last week, I'm updating one of my Vegas guidebooks for a new edition right now and look at what we published a scant four years ago:

The North Strip is undergoing a rebirth that began with the ritzy and vast resort Wynn Las Vegas and, by decade’s end, it will see more than $10 billion in new high-end resort construction.

Sigh. Maybe next decade.

LVW Col: The Upside of The Crash

Here's this week's Las Vegas Weekly column. Enjoy. -sf

Las Vegas’ downturn could have a surprising upside
By STEVE FRIESS

Last month, after moderating a political debate for a local business group, I stayed to talk with some attendees. One chat stuck with me, an encounter with a laid-off mid-level casino corporation executive whose partner had just also lost his job as a manager of an electronics store that closed.

“Between the two of us, we have four advanced degrees and we’re collecting unemployment,” he groused.

“So why don’t you move somewhere else?” I asked him.

“Oh, we can’t,” he said sadly. “We’re so underwater on our house and the house I had before we moved in together. We’re going to have to tough this out somehow.”

This conversation had a profound, unexpected effect on me: It made me realize the prolonged, brutal recession is both the worst thing that’s ever happened to Southern Nevada and, also, potentially the best thing that’s ever happened to Las Vegas as a community.

Hear me out, please. I’m not in favor of anyone going broke or losing their jobs. Really, I’m not.

Read the rest at LasVegasWeekly.com

This week's LVW col: Building Block

Here's this week's Las Vegas Weekly piece, to some extent a continuation of the thoughts from last week. Cheers!

Building block
More than a few did see this mess coming, and acted accordingly
By STEVE FRIESS

The competition was trying to be dignified, generous, sympathetic.

“Yes, I think it would be devastating to Las Vegas for MGM to fail,” said Jan Laverty Jones, senior vice president at Harrah’s and former Vegas mayor, to my question from last week’s column about whether MGM Mirage and CityCenter were the Nevada equivalent of an entity “too big to fail.” “But,” she added, “the question becomes, did MGM really get too big, or did the precipitous fall in the economy and consumer confidence cause the size of the project to be too big? Could anyone ever have expected this?”

That last question perked my ears up, because it was nearly verbatim something Phil Ruffin, the Kansas billionaire taking the Treasure Island off of MGM Mirage’s hands for $775 million, had said an hour earlier.

“This economy is so bad,” Ruffin said. “Who would have predicted any of this would happen?”

Well, here’s the thing: They did. Both of them and/or their corporations.

Okay, they didn’t anticipate the historic international implosion of the housing and credit markets. They didn’t know that Wall Street and Main Street would be brought to their knees by bizarre, unsustainable and falsely valued financial instruments or that, for the first time in anyone’s memory, a major economic disruption would turn once-impervious Las Vegas into a tourist ghost town and conventioneers’ national pariah.

So, no. Foreseeing this precise event coming to pass? Terry Lanni, Jim Murren, Kirk Kerkorian, Sheldon Adelson and the rest of the MGM Mirage and Las Vegas Sands leaderships are absolved of that.

But how about simply a serious slowdown? A saturation of the marketplace? A pause that refreshes?

Read the rest at this Las Vegas Weekly link.

Is This The Great Depression II???

I know times are bad. I know the economic news, particularly in the housing and credit markets are pretty miserable. But this headline from a Wynn press release is just ridiculous:


If you can't read it, that headline announcing the resort is hiring 5,300 people claims that "state and national unemployment rates reach record highs." Now, I hadn't heard THAT. In the text, they mention Nevada unemployment is at 6.4 percent, the highest since 1994, but even a city as young as this one has to know that that's not all-time. That's just 14 years ago. And nationally, unemployment is at 5.5 percent. Not a record. Or near one. No, it's not a "mental recession," but still.

I just wonder why the Wynn folks needed to gussy up something that is already pretty good news for a lot of people, that someone in Vegas is hiring 5,000+ people.

Here's the video news release they created in hopes that TV stations will use it within alteration. Believe it or not, many do. Elaine Wynn, of course, looks terrific. I noticed they didn't have any dealers in there, hmm?



Gotta drive to Kingman now. Will be gone all day. Behave, everyone. If you want to go work for Wynn and, perhaps, avoid the bread lines, click here.

My Own Private Super Tuesday

Sometimes stuff just all comes together all at once. But this is ridiculous. Here's a rundown of my May 6:

* The New York Times: My long feature on the young casino moguls of Vegas, is out front in the Business Section.
* Newsweek.Com: My piece examining the recession's impact on Vegas is the top front-screen story.
* The Washington Post: My account of Nevada's messy gubernatorial divorce is on page A2.
* Agence France Press: My report on the Tropicana's bankruptcy filing is here.

Enjoy!