A Las Vegas Global Economic Alliance initiative that brought executives to the area during Super Bowl 58 festivities to showcase what the city has to offer beyond the Strip and meet with stakeholders could lead to businesses relocating here, officials said.
“Without exception, every single one of those CEOs or decision-makers — C-suite members who came — said, ‘I had no idea,’ ” said Tina Quigley, president and CEO of the Las Vegas Global Economic Alliance (LVGEA). “Either, ‘We’ve been thinking about Las Vegas, but it wasn’t at the top of our list,’ or ‘Huh, I hadn’t really thought about Las Vegas.’ So it worked.”
Quigley reflected on the outcome of the program dedicated to attracting businesses to Southern Nevada during the alliance’s State of Economic Development presentation Tuesday at UNLV.
She said she initially thought success would be bringing three companies to the region within 12 months of the program — called LOCATE Las Vegas. Now, she estimates at least nine are seriously considering relocating or expanding into Nevada.
“They got a sense of the fact that, even though we are a population of 2.4 (million), we’re actually a small community,” Quigley told the Sun. “And you are just one degree of separation from whoever you need to be talking to — and there’s really no way to explain that to somebody without them experiencing it.”
Cooperation throughout the business community in Las Vegas seemed to be the biggest takeaway for three CEOs who participated in the program and also spoke on a panel about the program at Tuesday’s event.
Jay Torres, CEO of the production company iDentity, said during the panel that he was most impressed by how everybody in Las Vegas came together and worked as a group to make the program happen.
“Everybody was great, and it didn’t feel like competition — it felt like cooperation,” Torres said. “And it really feels different. Because, being in (Los Angeles) for the amount of time I’ve been working there, there’s not the spirit of getting business done.”
Other panelists echoed the sentiment, with Yoona Kim — CEO of Arine, a biotech company currently based in San Francisco — saying that she was not only impressed by the speed at which the economic development community in Las Vegas could get their work done and help companies like hers, but also by the collaboration it spurs.
“I think that’s what you all do so well,” she said. “You make everyone feel like you’re part of the community … I didn’t know that about Las Vegas before this event. I didn’t know how close-knit everyone was and how closely people work together. But I felt like I walked away with some really great relationships.”
She has already started talking to friends who are also entrepreneurs about what Las Vegas has to offer, in hopes that they’ll want to move to the area with her, Kim quipped.
The program’s nature demanded that various municipalities and leaders work together to showcase the Las Vegas Valley and all it has to offer as a whole, which Alex Hancock, senior vice president of national sales and leasing for Howard Hughes Holdings Inc., called “incredible.”
“I’ve never seen anything like it,” he said during a panel Tuesday. “To see all these community leaders come together — but then also experts in workforce development, education — and I think it culminated a little bit in the showcase of community, which was very powerful and I think embodied the spirit of Las Vegas.”
The efforts of public and private partners like Howard Hughes, LVGEA and other stakeholders in the program have already yielded success in companies like Thrill One Sports and Entertainment, which earlier this month officially moved its headquarters to Las Vegas.
Matt Cohn, the CEO of the content company, said Tuesday it was impactful for him to learn that business and government leaders in the Las Vegas community were only “one phone call away.”
He noted that many of his employees who maybe were not initially thrilled by the move to Las Vegas have already warmed to it, and others who had not planned to relocate to the region are now considering the move.
“We truly felt that it was a competitive advantage for our company to be here,” said Cohn, who cited the number of professional sports teams that have already come to Las Vegas, and those still on their way. “We thought we were still going to be somewhat ahead of the curve in being able to take advantage of all Las Vegas has to offer in the Sports-Entertainment Capital of the World.”
Local economic leaders from Henderson, the city of Las Vegas, Boulder City and elsewhere discussed during a separate panel the importance of each municipality working as a single unit to bring business to the region.
Programs like LOCATE open up the door for each municipality in Southern Nevada to grow not in competition with each other, but together in order to compete with other regions in the nation, said Jared Luke, director of government affairs and economic development for the city of North Las Vegas.
“As a state, we’re still trying to figure out what we are and understand what we can do as we diversify this economy,” Luke said. “So bringing these companies in, doing what we do — and we do it very well, we do it better than anybody else in the world — showing folks a good time, I think it makes perfect sense.”
The program attendees present at the LVGEA event pointed to tax incentives and a reliable workforce as aspects of economic development for Las Vegas to focus on when it comes to drawing businesses to Las Vegas.
Quigley, in her closing remarks, emphasized that “economic development is a competitive sport,” which is why the LVGEA is keeping score of Southern Nevada’s tax climate, regulatory environment, real estate and other economic factors in comparison to places like Texas, Southern California or Arizona.
She also announced the debut of the “Talent Pipeline Dashboard,” a beta website and database to inventory all the different certificate, degree or training programs in the region, and ultimately show companies where their workforce may be coming from in Southern Nevada, and how to connect to them.
“We are no longer at the point where we are just waiting for companies to show up,” Quigley said Tuesday, pointing to Las Vegas’ targeting of nontraditional industries for the region, like fintech, biotech and more. “We’re no longer waiting for the fish to jump in the boat.”
When it comes to bringing business to Las Vegas, Quigley said, the region’s competitive advantage is its community.
“I have a call to action for all of you,” she told attendees Tuesday. “I think we know what the secret sauce is in terms of truly diversifying our economy. So let’s go out and win.”
katieann.mccarver@gmg vegas.com/ 702-259-4059 / @_katieann13_