With small booth, a new push to lure out-of-state companies

By Richard N. Velotta

Saturday, June 19, 2010 | 2 a.m.

Matthew Schissler used to ponder moving his company to Las Vegas during his long drives from Southern California to the Las Vegas Convention Center, where he frequently attended trade shows.

The chairman and CEO of Cord Blood America Inc. was back at the Convention Center again this month. But this time, he was Exhibit A for a new Las Vegas Convention Center booth aimed at recruiting out-of-staters to set up shop in Nevada.

The booth, targeting conventioneers, is a partnership between the Nevada Development Authority and Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority. It has a potential audience of more than 1.5 million travelers who visit the Convention Center every year — people like Schissler.

If the booth had been in place a couple of years ago, Las Vegas might have snagged one of the largest umbilical cord blood stem cell preservation companies in the nation sooner than it did.

Schissler opened his 17,000-square-foot business near McCarran International Airport last fall after moving his cryogenics and stem cell lab and executive offices from Santa Monica, Calif.

Development authority President and CEO Somer Hollingsworth’s unbridled cheerleading for Southern Nevada, and convention authority President and CEO Rossi Ralenkotter’s constant reminder that “Las Vegas means business” might come across as being a little over the top. Put them next to Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman and his showgirls with hundreds of conventioneers at the Convention Center and it’s easy to dismiss the whole thing as a big publicity stunt.

But get someone such as Schissler to spread the word about how and why he moved to Las Vegas and the message resonates.

“It made a lot of sense for me to be here because I was coming here at least once a month to meet with some of these companies at trade shows,” he said. “For us, it was great because we have easy access to the airport and (shipping materials) in and out of here is so easy.”

Now Schissler is hoping to help develop a biotechnology incubator program to attract similar companies to the state.

The new booth at the Convention Center is a 16-by-8-foot space with three video monitors playing fast-paced loops of scenes of Southern Nevadans at work and at play. In the center is a sign boasting that Las Vegas has the “best business climate in the U.S.”

Schissler praised the development authority for steering him to the state incentives that enabled Cord Blood to get tax abatements and deferrals for moving to Nevada. A representative of the Nevada Economic Development Commission, which operates the incentive program, was at the recent rollout of the booth.

It made its debut during the three-day International Communications Association’s Infocomm 2010 trade show, which expected attendance of about 32,000 people.

The development authority expects to put four of its workers at the booth at any given time. The beauty of having a booth is that if a company has an interest in the area, the development authority can drive executives out to see whatever they need to look at if it helps them make a decision.

So why didn’t the development and convention authorities collaborate on such a thing long ago?

The answer lies in today’s tougher economic times. Glenn Christenson, who heads the development authority’s board, said when times were good, there wasn’t as much urgency to recruit companies to move to Southern Nevada. Hard times have proved that the area has to diversify its economy with businesses that have nothing to do with gaming or tourism to protect it from downturns.

Christenson said in today’s environment, every new company helps. The same attitude prevails at McCarran, where Aviation Director Randall Walker used to have some disdain for passengers who connected to other flights in Las Vegas because they didn’t spend any time or money at the city’s resorts. But today, he acknowledges that every passenger is valuable because he or she contributes at least something to the tax base.

The development authority says it has found California to be fertile ground for luring businesses because of its high taxes and overbearing regulatory environment. The development authority is well known in California for advertising to persuade executives to give Nevada a look.

But if the development authority has a no-rent booth at the Convention Center and someone such as Schissler to make a pitch, it may not need to advertise much.

Schissler even has some advice for cold-climate-based companies that could benefit from some sunshine: “When it’s raining sideways and it’s 30 degrees, it’s time to call the Nevada Development Authority,” he said.

A version of this story appears in this week’s In Business Las Vegas, a sister publication of the Sun.