Vegas an unattractive option for corporate home base

Monday, April 30, 2007 | 7:36 a.m.

Las Vegas can easily draw tens of millions of tourists to town every year, but luring a corporate headquarters to Southern Nevada is a whole other matter.

Sure, we have no income taxes, marvelous sunsets and lots of bowling alleys for company leagues.

But persuading corporate headquarters to move here is made difficult by our soaring land costs, lack of affordable housing, poorly educated workers, weak schools and lack of cultural amenities.

That was the frank assessment during a roundtable discussion among developers, business executives and government officials who mused over the problem last year.

Their pessimistic conclusions have been condensed into a report released last week by the Lied Institute for Real Estate Studies that addresses the challenges to diversifying our economy.

Big companies come to Las Vegas "reluctantly," one of the roundtable participants said.

"Our cost of living is currently at 110 percent of the national average," said another participant who, like others, was not identified in the report to promote candor. "Housing is more expensive than 40 other markets, and we don't offer anything in the way of cultural amenities, which makes us far less attractive to businesses. Our crime statistics have gone off the charts and our out-migration continues to increase. These are the kind of things that big corporations look at, and we don't look very attractive."

Wages aren't keeping pace with the rising cost of living and while executive salaries are competitive, those executives aren't going to alter their lifestyles to move here, the report said.

One businessman said: "The overall quality of our schools impedes all recruitment, but especially in the white-collar sector. Big companies can resolve some housing cost issues by offering allowances or loans, but they can't fix our schools."

An executive piped in: "We have service employees coaching their kids to be valet parkers who can make $100,000 a year. Employees with companies like IBM look at our schools, at UNLV, and they see problems."

The factors that make Las Vegas attractive, such as no state income tax, are outweighed by quality-of-life concerns, the report said.

Opposition to mixed-use rail and bike routes was criticized in the discussion because such projects are viewed as amenities in other communities, one participant said.

Among other comments contained in the report: