Las Vegas glitz dulled by growing pains

"Just five to 10 years ago, you heard all the time that this was a middle-class working town where you could ... work hard and afford a house close to your work," says Robert Parker, an urbanist at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. "That's not true anymore. The frontier is moving further and further out to where a normal worker has to drive two hours just to find an affordable home."

But amid the hoopla of the Wynn opening, and in a state where 50 to 60 percent of the state's general fund is generated by the resort industry, Hollingsworth, Mayor Oscar Goodman, and others trumpet the advantages of growth and the increased diversity of the economy. In 1970, 70 percent of Los Vegas's income came from gambling. Last year, that figure was 40 percent. Along with the growth of gaming has come pharmaceuticals, telecommunications, Internet development, computers, alternative power, and aerospace. Many of those businesses have been enticed here with the incentive of no state corporate income tax or personal income tax from neighboring states, especially California.

Today, just 22 percent of the state's workforce is tied to hotels, gaming, and recreation compared with 29 percent in 1995. And many observers tout the increased quality of the companies which run the casinos, the Harvard MBAs who administer them, and the fact that they are publicly traded on Wall Street as evidence that Las Vegas is increasingly "legit."

"Let's face it, there isn't enough illegal money in the world to build this many casinos ... so you are seeing a city that is very different than the Las Vegas of lore," says Hal Rothman, author of "Neon Metropolis: How Las Vegas Started the 21st Century." "These are all publicly traded companies on NASDAQ and NYSE.... This isn't the world of Tony 'the Ant' Spilotro."

That comment is reflected in those of tourists from one end of the strip to the other, many who have been coming here for decades.

"When you came here in the '60s, the hotels, the casinos, everything reeked of smoke," says Pat Schultz, a local government worker from Chicago who has been coming twice a year for decades.

"Things are cleaner, more upbeat, safer. There's much more to do [than] just gambling."

Still, one of the things that revived the city's fortunes since 9/11 is a new promotion called "What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas" - a series of commercials in which actors are seen doing silly things from getting married in a wedding boutique to fantasizing they are line dancers.

"Other local businesses [besides gaming] were upset at first because they have been trying to convince people to move their manufacturing and other companies here," says Kathleen Foley, editor of Nevada Business Journal. "But the campaign has become so successful that it is generating a multiplier effect into the convention and business community as well ... so they stopped complaining."

The ability of Las Vegas to sell itself as a destination where the norms and rules of daily life are thrown out the window, continues to be the city's biggest draw. "Vegas has managed to learn how to make itself be all things to all people," says historian Rothman. "If you are into country music, there is a niche for you here, or if you are into NASCAR there is a niche, or if you are a billionaire or drive a Chevette or Yugo, there is a place for you."

As such, says Rothman, Vegas has reaped the fallout from Indian gaming that began in 1988 and has spread to 28 states. Indeed, the spread of gambling has only helped to secure the strip as an entertainment mecca. "The Wynn opening is another pivotal moment in the normalization of leisure and gaming as economic forces in American society," says Rothman.

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