LV gets mixed reviews

Martin Kuz

Thursday, Jan. 29, 1998 | 10:05 a.m.

Outlook magazine lauds Las Vegas' "higher learning opportunities." Education Week blisters Nevada for devoting "little energy for school reform."

The lifestyle publication Sunset touts Sin City as "the West's new hometown." Money magazine ranks it a somber 86th in its 1997 "Best Places to Live" issue.

Time waxes that "life for Vegas residents ... is more thoroughly sugar-frosted than anywhere else." National Geographic cautions the city against "expansion to the point of oblivion."

Ping. Pong. Ping. Pong.

As with God and the Mafia -- two things cynics say this town needs a little more of nowadays -- Las Vegas always has inflamed contrasting, sometimes schizophrenic opinions. And in recent years it appears nothing sells for national magazines like a Vegas tale, an indication, perhaps, that the city rests not on silver and gold deposits, but a wellspring of ink.

Yet while the old adage about any publicity being good publicity still holds, the epidemic of conflicting views can leave even the most level head spinning at high rpm. With publications from coast to coast repudiating both each other and the city's apparent status quo, it's sometimes hard to know where the Vegas ends and the public relations begin.

The latest confusion spills across the pages of Outlook's January/February issue, which pegs Las Vegas as the country's third-best city "in which to live and do business" behind top-ranked San Francisco and Raleigh-Durham, N.C. Using data from the Departments of Labor and Commerce and the U.S. Census Bureau, among others, the business journal based its selection of the top 25 cities on quality of life, business climate, crime, taxes, transportation and education.

Word of the article at City Hall last week had fax machines whirring, spitting out press releases that hailed the morsel of happy news. Crooned Mayor Jan Laverty Jones: "This further solidifies and demonstrates the city's position as a major metropolitan area in the nation." Local publications, including the SUN and the Review-Journal, coughed up obligatory blurbs about another Las Vegas "honor."

But a closer analysis of the article uncovers several paradoxes, none of which put that special glow on the city's image. Consider a few of the amenities mentioned by Outlook that muddy when juxtaposed with recent news reports.

* "Citicorp and Bank of America each have mega credit processing operations (here)..." The untold story: The American Bankruptcy Institute fingered Nevada for the fourth-highest consumer bankruptcy filing rate in '96, with one in every 51 households going bust. Early estimates indicate the rate rose by as much as 25 percent last year, five points ahead of the national pace.

* "McCarran International Airport is experiencing a $500 million upgrade over10 years." The untold story: Earlier this month, airport officials revealed that a design flaw would push construction of a new $106 million terminal nearly $4 million over budget.

* "The Community College of Southern Nevada and UNLV have higher learning opportunities for students to become better workers." The untold story: According to Education Week, Nevada boasts the country's highest one-year dropout rate among high school students. Moreover, less than 40 percent of those who manage to graduate go on to college, the second-worst mark nationwide.

* "Recreational activities by Lake Mead ..." The untold story: The presence of perchlorate, an oxidizer used in rocket fuel, in Southern Nevada's main drinking water supply has ignited concerns over the chemical's effect on human thyroid glands.

* "New technical wizardry like the $70 million Fremont Street Experience ..." The untold story: Dogged for years by litigation over its use of eminent domain to build what detractors call "downtown's Lite-Brite," the city now faces another lawsuit alleging it has manacled First Amendment freedoms on the pedestrian mall.

Granted, it's easy enough to argue the glass is half-empty -- even easier if you pour out other damning evidence such as Nevada owning the nation's highest suicide rate, the kicking up of 70,000 tons of dust in the Las Vegas Valley each year and a cost of living well above the national average.

But Outlook Managing Editor Kenneth Joyce, an erstwhile Las Vegas resident, doesn't scurry from the contradictions. He pointed out that by the criteria of his magazine, a 60,000-circulation bimonthly aimed at business executives, the city simply bests most of the competition in nurturing commerce. A unified business community that dotes on its indigenous industry and an education system that -- regardless of its other faults -- prepares students for the rigors of the local hospitality market are just two high points ticked off by Joyce.

"You can't say everything is completely rosy there," he said from Outlook's Dallas offices. "But in terms of making efforts that are going to help Vegas deal with the 21st century, their civic leaders are doing it."

City and county officials take the same tack, saying a knee-jerk tendency to rub raw the valley's warts, while certainly a natural reaction, clouds what they see as the untold -- or at least forgotten -- story.

"We're so close to things, sometimes that's all we see (are flaws)," said City Councilman Larry Brown. "But believe me, in talking with people around the country, they'd love to have these problems."

"We always have room for improvement. We can always do better," noted Clark County Commissioner Erin Kenny. "We won't make everybody happy, but I do know everybody is trying really hard to do that."

Excuse some residents, however, if they treat such rah-rah sentiments as so much hollow boosterism. They insist that no matter how loudly Outlook plays up its business slant, traces of rocket fuel in the water supply, for example, affect all Las Vegans. Including those in suits.

Hearing of Vegas' third-place showing in the magazine elicited an ironic laugh from Randy Harness, conservation committee chairman of the Sierra Club's Southern Nevada Chapter. "Makes you wonder where they get their information from. Sounds like they called the chamber of commerce."

Since much of the coverage from mainstream periodicals this decade has bordered on fawning, Harness worries that city officials have bought into their own press clippings. A resident here in the 1960s, Harness moved to San Jose before returning in the late '80s to escape California's rampant urban sprawl and air pollution. What he came back to was local leaders making the same mistakes -- yet somehow snagging praise for their efforts.

"I can't believe the PR machine they have in this town. It's absolutely incredible," Harness said.

Jim Feeney and Harry Pappas parrot that disbelief. Two middle-aged residents with distinctly different beefs about the city, both have a reached a starkly similar conclusion about Las Vegas: the bottom has fallen out on its quality of life.

"It's become like a big zoo," said Feeney, who lives near Industrial and Warm Springs roads, a location bombarded by noise from planes flying in and out of McCarran. "I don't know where these magazines get their information from. They must be talking to tourists who go through here. They're not talking to the residents."

Added Pappas, entrenched in a four-year legal feud with the city over its eminent domain purchase of his home to make way for a downtown parking garage: "If anyone's mentioning the Fremont Street Experience (in their survey), they're getting fed a line by the city of Las Vegas without looking at the real data."

Ultimately, however, no matter how vigorously a magazine crunches numbers, perhaps the most accurate distillation of the press -- good and bad -- that Las Vegas receives is this: it's entirely subjective.

Take Money's ranking last year of the city as the country's 86th best place to live. Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce spokesman Mike Varney, a longtime resident of Madison, Wis., recalled how the magazine tapped that city as its No. 1 in 1996. While flattering for Madisonites, Varney said any resident could have dug up dirt on the town, just as Las Vegans could make a case for their city deserving a higher spot.

"I could do a lot of 'yeah, buts ...' about Madison. But there's no perfect city no matter where you're living," Varney said. "The bottom line is, this is a business-friendly city in a business-friendly state. Las Vegas is a city where the American dream is alive and well."

Hmmm. "Las Vegas -- a city where the American dream is alive and well." Sounds like another magazine headline.