5 ms·

$350M Might Not Be Enough to Save Las Vegas

52 points by neilc 12y ago

Shivetya 12y ago
Kind of hard to feel any remorse for their problems, their convention agency recently purchased the Riviera at the end of February and last I read it was to shut down by May displacing dozens of booked conferences and 150,000 booked room nights. If they were so worried about tourism you would think they would look to not pull stunts like that, but this quasi government agency really has no limits.
chrismealy 12y ago
The reason nice places like SF and NYC are so expensive is that nobody is trying to make more nice places. Tony Hsieh is doing a great thing to trying to make a new nice place. It's too bad the blocks in Vegas are so large (looks like 380x480) and the streets so wide. It'll be really hard to ever make that appealing, especially given the climate.
- toomuchtodo 12y ago
  I think the problem is, no matter how nice you make new places, people are still going to want to be in those existing nice places. Megacities are the best example of the network effect.
- wwweston 12y ago
  > nobody is trying to make more nice places. One of the things I learned from an open-ended road trip around half the United States a while back is that there are lots of nice places... maybe more than there's actually time to see, apparently more than the number of slots most US citizens have in their head for Nice Places(TM). And I'm glad some of my favorites are off the mainstream map, because it means I can better afford real estate there (though for most of these the locals and local developers are making it more expensive anyway). It's arguable that some places offer unique levels of specific opportunities, and if SF and NY are like that for you, there's nothing wrong with choosing them. But there's a whole country of nice places between the two. > It's too bad the blocks in Vegas are so large (looks like 380x480) and the streets so wide. This is far from LV's biggest problem; well-subdivided blocks interspersed with good paths suitable for pedestrians and light vehicles could work out fine, keeping auto traffic proper at the periphery, maybe something people don't even have to deal with on a day-to-day basis.
  - antr 12y ago
    The "380x480" blocks comment reminds me of this talk by an urban planner on why people want to live in (European-like) cities, the grid layout seems to be a problem: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0rUH63c1n0c&t=5m24s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0rUH63c1n0c&t=5m24s
    - x0x0 12y ago
      that talk is fascinating for the illustration of employment density too, and this factoid: 43% of new yorkers live within 400m of a subway station
  - AVTizzle 12y ago
    Great perspective. I'm curious... would you mind indulging us in a couple of said favorites that are off the mainstream radar?
  - ghaff 12y ago
    Well, there are lots of Nice Places(TM) in the US but they're nice across an incredibly wide range of attributes. And the Nice Places I'd want to live in (to say nothing of be likely to get a job in or near) are a pretty subset of the Nice Places I enjoy visiting.
- michaelchisari 12y ago
  SF and NYC aren't near the nicest places in the US. The reason NYC and SF are so expensive is because of an inability to develop outward (or even upward in SF's case). Chicago is a fantastic city, with plenty that those cities have, and plenty more that they don't. And yet, a good portion of the neighborhoods have reasonable rent.
  - cynicalkane 12y ago
    NYC is needlessly expensive but not by as much as you think. Building very dense cities is a thing that costs money, and if you look at very dense well-developed cities with good economies, only Hong Kong and Singapore come in as slightly cheaper. Most of the parts of NYC near the city center are so dense you need to build n-story mid-rise or high-rise condos if you want to add more people. That is expensive even if there were no political barriers.
    - x0x0 12y ago
      nyc is also helped once you realize you can get by with zero cars. Your transport cost is $112/mo for an unlimited metro card plus perhaps $100/mo for the odd cab. That replaces car payment, insurance, parking, gas, and repairs -- easily $400+/mo. Edit: and, distinctly contrary to sf, you won't miss a car. There is a food delivery culture: you may assume the vast majority of restaurants deliver. Seamless web is amazing. Groceries, gyms, dry cleaners, wash-and-folds, restaurants, and delis are so close to the majority of places you can live that you have no need for a vehicle.
      - xienze 12y ago
        > nyc is also helped once you realize you can get by with zero cars. Your transport cost is $112/mo for an unlimited metro card plus perhaps $100/mo for the odd cab. That replaces car payment, insurance, parking, gas, and repairs -- easily $400+/mo. Now consider the rent differential between NYC and any other "cars required" city in the US. There goes your $400 and then some...
        12y ago
- mbillie1 12y ago
  > It'll be really hard to ever make that appealing How about folks drinking beer on the street, the ceaseless outside speakers, and totally shameless flaunting of the sex trade on every corner? I'm not a prude, but there is something to be said for a little class. I didn't even notice the block/street size when I was there.
  - joshuapants 12y ago
    Nothing wrong with drinking outdoors (though Vegas probably brings out the worst in it), but I agree with you on the rest.
  - rodgerd 12y ago
    I didn't find the sex trade particularly off-putting my only time in Vegas; what I did find awful was the constant hustle and hard sell. The public transport actually seemed pretty good, and I would have been quite comfortable walking about if it weren't for people constantly, constantly in my face, trying to sell me something.
melling 12y ago
Sounds like they're hiring some of the wrong people. “While some squandered the opportunity to ‘dent the universe,’” he wrote, “others never cared about doing so in the first place."
- mey 12y ago
  “While some squandered the opportunity to ‘dent the universe,’” he wrote, “others never cared about doing so in the first place. There were heroes among us, however, and it is for them that my soul weeps.” That quote is pretty powerful and damning.
  - WillPostForFood 12y ago
    And completely unsubstantiated with any details. I went and read the original letter, and it said nothing informative.
enraged_camel 12y ago
Paul Graham once wrote [1] that you need two kinds of people in order to create a startup hub: rich people and nerds. Vegas has too few of both. First of all, it has very few nerds, because there aren't any schools nearby with strong technology programs, and the lack of nerds makes other nerds not interested in living there. In fact, the place has a reputation for being the hedonism capital of America. That's pretty much the opposite of a nerdy lifestyle. As for rich people, while there are many in Vegas, most of them are there for gambling and entertainment, on temporary escapades from work and life, rather than permanent residents. So they have no vested interest in seeing the place develop. The Downtown Project's efforts to revitalize the downtown area have been successful in terms of making the place safer and cleaner. However, the cultural improvements feel pretty shallow. Culture can't be forced or imitated: it comes into life as result of lots of interesting and diverse people interacting with each other in organic ways. So Tony and crew can build all the container parks and hip bars that they want. It will not make the place a hub for creative thinking and technical innovation. I've also been reading articles and hearing from friends about the gross mismanagement of the Downtown Project as a whole. Apparently, Hsieh appointed a bunch of his friends and relatives to various leadership positions despite their lack of ability. This nepotism has resulted in serious issues in competence and accountability. Which is pretty surprising: Tony is supposedly a smart guy, and you'd think that someone that smart would also the brains to hire some professional leadership to manage a project worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Oh well. -- [1]http://paulgraham.com/siliconvalley.html http://paulgraham.com/siliconvalley.html
iamleppert 12y ago
Nobody wants to live in that heat. I wouldn't move there, and I work in tech.
- brandon272 12y ago
  I love the heat! I'd love to live there.
michaelchisari 12y ago
“One of the things he didn’t love about those campuses was that they were very exclusive,” Maria Phelan, a Downtown Project spokeswoman told me. “He liked the idea of more of a NYU-campus feeling—you don’t know for sure where the campus ends and begins.” I can really appreciate this. I've never liked the tendency of the tech industry to create bubbles (2*entendre) and enclose their campuses and workers.
thomasmarriott 12y ago
This failure reaffirms the most undercelebrated genius of the last century; George Phydias Mitchell — father of fracking, savior of the alpha magnetic spectrometer[edit], pioneer of the particle accelerator, and developer of the most successful master planned community in America; The Woodlands. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_P._Mitchell http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_P._Mitchell
- privong 12y ago
  > savior of the Hubble, pioneer of the particle accelerator I am skeptical that either of those "titles" are supportable. What I could find in a quick search is that Mitchell gave Texas A&M money to be a founding partner in the Giant Magellan Telescope Consortium[0], which is building a 30m-class telescope in Chile. The particle accelerator you're presumably referencing is the Superconducting Super Collider—canceled in the 90s after massive cost overruns—which he had apparently supported in some fashion[1]. Financial support is obviously necessary, but neither of those make him a "savior" of something he didn't actually finance (Hubble), or a "pioneer" for an experimental technique that had been developed in the 1930s–1960s[2]. [0] http://www.science.tamu.edu/news/story.php?story_ID=806 http://www.science.tamu.edu/news/story.php?story_ID=806 [1] http://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/article/Mitchell-s-35-million-a-gift-to-A-M-physics-1580309.php http://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/article/Mitchell-s-3... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_accelerators_in_particle_physics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_accelerators_in_partic... Edit: I am not saying that he Mitchell did not make significant contributions to the things listed, merely that the titles may be exaggerated.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
ChuckMcM 12y ago
Interesting piece. The original "hub" of downtown was the Union Plaza train station. If you took a train through Las Vegas that was where it stopped, and it dropped you off right at the "top" of Fremont St. After the railroad pulled out the station was bulldozed into another tower for the Union Plaza hotel. That said, if there is anywhere in Vegas that can be turned into a "walkable" area, it is that area of downtown. I give Tony tremendous props for having the vision to see it. And a few times my parents have urged me to move back and start a tech company there :-) It is still hot though, and it is still undeniably tacky as only Vegas can be. And that is a hard thing to get past.
snowwrestler 12y ago
Over the long term, it's going to take a lot more than $350m to save Vegas. It might not be saveable at all. http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2014/07/lake_mead_before_and_after_colorado_river_basin_losing_water_at_shocking.html http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2014/0...
threefifty 12y ago
A couple months ago I spoke with a friend who is a city planner for a top firm and earned his master's from [one of] the top planning schools in the country. He knows some people involved with this project, and apparently those in charge decided to just wing it rather than hire a professional planning firm. Imagine all of the data you must consider when trying to develop a decent-sized city not only for today, but for 30 years into the future. It's a tremendous undertaking and to just skip out on planning sounded to me like it was a significant contributing factor to the demise of this urban renewal. creating a tech hub that could drive the economy, much in the same way startups are now thriving in places such as Pittsburgh This isn't even remotely true. Pittsburgh has very little in terms of successful startups. Do you want to program in Java and C++ in a cubicle? That's the nature of Pittsburgh's "tech hub." Pittsburgh's economy is driven by education, medicine, banking, steel/glass/aluminum/natgas. Pittsburgh, for instance, has Carnegie Mellon, which has focused on turning campus ideas into new businesses This is why I have to seriously question articles and stories about fields in which I'm not informed. This is absolutely not true. CMU is a joke with regard to startups. DuoLingo, Yinzcam, and Shoefitr are perhaps the only notable ones. There are some robotics startups no one has heard of, but a Stanford English major has a better likelihood of even creating a tech startup than a CMU CS grad.
- bsder 12y ago
  > This isn't even remotely true. Pittsburgh has very little in terms of successful startups. This wasn't always true in the past. Sadly, the demise of Westinghouse hurt badly. In addition, the upper managers of companies want to be in Cranberry Township, but that's too far away from the colleges. One thing that seems to be common about tech hubs is having the schools and the businesses close to each other. Stanford is buried in Silicon Valley. UT Austin is a quick bus ride from downtown. Boston universities are all over, and it has a very good subway system.
- crapshoot101 12y ago
  That's absolutely false. To take one example, ModCloth came out of CMU. Way back in the past, Lycos came out of CMU (a multi-billion $ exit back in the old days). More recently, something like Anki is a bunch of CMU engineers; GroupMe's co-founder was a CMU grad. Also, Google has a big hub there, Uber just opened a robotics research facility, Steel is a legacy of Pittsurgh's past, not its current. You're free to complain about Pittsburgh, but some data would be nice.
gonzo 12y ago
Vegas was fine (somewhat great, even) back in the 60s and 70s, when I was growing up there. The the military spending stopped, and a bunch of people moved in from the LA basin.

52 points by neilc 12y ago

Kind of hard to feel any remorse for their problems, their convention agency recently purchased the Riviera at the end of February and last I read it was to shut down by May displacing dozens of booked conferences and 150,000 booked room nights. If they were so worried about tourism you would think they would look to not pull stunts like that, but this quasi government agency really has no limits.

chrismealy 12y ago

The reason nice places like SF and NYC are so expensive is that nobody is trying to make more nice places. Tony Hsieh is doing a great thing to trying to make a new nice place. It's too bad the blocks in Vegas are so large (looks like 380x480) and the streets so wide. It'll be really hard to ever make that appealing, especially given the climate.

toomuchtodo 12y ago
I think the problem is, no matter how nice you make new places, people are still going to want to be in those existing nice places. Megacities are the best example of the network effect.
wwweston 12y ago
> nobody is trying to make more nice places. One of the things I learned from an open-ended road trip around half the United States a while back is that there are lots of nice places... maybe more than there's actually time to see, apparently more than the number of slots most US citizens have in their head for Nice Places(TM). And I'm glad some of my favorites are off the mainstream map, because it means I can better afford real estate there (though for most of these the locals and local developers are making it more expensive anyway). It's arguable that some places offer unique levels of specific opportunities, and if SF and NY are like that for you, there's nothing wrong with choosing them. But there's a whole country of nice places between the two. > It's too bad the blocks in Vegas are so large (looks like 380x480) and the streets so wide. This is far from LV's biggest problem; well-subdivided blocks interspersed with good paths suitable for pedestrians and light vehicles could work out fine, keeping auto traffic proper at the periphery, maybe something people don't even have to deal with on a day-to-day basis.
- antr 12y ago
  The "380x480" blocks comment reminds me of this talk by an urban planner on why people want to live in (European-like) cities, the grid layout seems to be a problem: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0rUH63c1n0c&t=5m24s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0rUH63c1n0c&t=5m24s
  - x0x0 12y ago
    that talk is fascinating for the illustration of employment density too, and this factoid: 43% of new yorkers live within 400m of a subway station
- AVTizzle 12y ago
  Great perspective. I'm curious... would you mind indulging us in a couple of said favorites that are off the mainstream radar?
- ghaff 12y ago
  Well, there are lots of Nice Places(TM) in the US but they're nice across an incredibly wide range of attributes. And the Nice Places I'd want to live in (to say nothing of be likely to get a job in or near) are a pretty subset of the Nice Places I enjoy visiting.
michaelchisari 12y ago
SF and NYC aren't near the nicest places in the US. The reason NYC and SF are so expensive is because of an inability to develop outward (or even upward in SF's case). Chicago is a fantastic city, with plenty that those cities have, and plenty more that they don't. And yet, a good portion of the neighborhoods have reasonable rent.
- cynicalkane 12y ago
  NYC is needlessly expensive but not by as much as you think. Building very dense cities is a thing that costs money, and if you look at very dense well-developed cities with good economies, only Hong Kong and Singapore come in as slightly cheaper. Most of the parts of NYC near the city center are so dense you need to build n-story mid-rise or high-rise condos if you want to add more people. That is expensive even if there were no political barriers.
  - x0x0 12y ago
    nyc is also helped once you realize you can get by with zero cars. Your transport cost is $112/mo for an unlimited metro card plus perhaps $100/mo for the odd cab. That replaces car payment, insurance, parking, gas, and repairs -- easily $400+/mo. Edit: and, distinctly contrary to sf, you won't miss a car. There is a food delivery culture: you may assume the vast majority of restaurants deliver. Seamless web is amazing. Groceries, gyms, dry cleaners, wash-and-folds, restaurants, and delis are so close to the majority of places you can live that you have no need for a vehicle.
    - xienze 12y ago
      > nyc is also helped once you realize you can get by with zero cars. Your transport cost is $112/mo for an unlimited metro card plus perhaps $100/mo for the odd cab. That replaces car payment, insurance, parking, gas, and repairs -- easily $400+/mo. Now consider the rent differential between NYC and any other "cars required" city in the US. There goes your $400 and then some...
      - 12y ago
mbillie1 12y ago
> It'll be really hard to ever make that appealing How about folks drinking beer on the street, the ceaseless outside speakers, and totally shameless flaunting of the sex trade on every corner? I'm not a prude, but there is something to be said for a little class. I didn't even notice the block/street size when I was there.
- joshuapants 12y ago
  Nothing wrong with drinking outdoors (though Vegas probably brings out the worst in it), but I agree with you on the rest.
- rodgerd 12y ago
  I didn't find the sex trade particularly off-putting my only time in Vegas; what I did find awful was the constant hustle and hard sell. The public transport actually seemed pretty good, and I would have been quite comfortable walking about if it weren't for people constantly, constantly in my face, trying to sell me something.

melling 12y ago

Sounds like they're hiring some of the wrong people. “While some squandered the opportunity to ‘dent the universe,’” he wrote, “others never cared about doing so in the first place."

mey 12y ago
“While some squandered the opportunity to ‘dent the universe,’” he wrote, “others never cared about doing so in the first place. There were heroes among us, however, and it is for them that my soul weeps.” That quote is pretty powerful and damning.
- WillPostForFood 12y ago
  And completely unsubstantiated with any details. I went and read the original letter, and it said nothing informative.

enraged_camel 12y ago

Paul Graham once wrote [1] that you need two kinds of people in order to create a startup hub: rich people and nerds. Vegas has too few of both. First of all, it has very few nerds, because there aren't any schools nearby with strong technology programs, and the lack of nerds makes other nerds not interested in living there. In fact, the place has a reputation for being the hedonism capital of America. That's pretty much the opposite of a nerdy lifestyle. As for rich people, while there are many in Vegas, most of them are there for gambling and entertainment, on temporary escapades from work and life, rather than permanent residents. So they have no vested interest in seeing the place develop. The Downtown Project's efforts to revitalize the downtown area have been successful in terms of making the place safer and cleaner. However, the cultural improvements feel pretty shallow. Culture can't be forced or imitated: it comes into life as result of lots of interesting and diverse people interacting with each other in organic ways. So Tony and crew can build all the container parks and hip bars that they want. It will not make the place a hub for creative thinking and technical innovation. I've also been reading articles and hearing from friends about the gross mismanagement of the Downtown Project as a whole. Apparently, Hsieh appointed a bunch of his friends and relatives to various leadership positions despite their lack of ability. This nepotism has resulted in serious issues in competence and accountability. Which is pretty surprising: Tony is supposedly a smart guy, and you'd think that someone that smart would also the brains to hire some professional leadership to manage a project worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Oh well. -- [1]http://paulgraham.com/siliconvalley.html http://paulgraham.com/siliconvalley.html

iamleppert 12y ago

Nobody wants to live in that heat. I wouldn't move there, and I work in tech.

brandon272 12y ago
I love the heat! I'd love to live there.

michaelchisari 12y ago

“One of the things he didn’t love about those campuses was that they were very exclusive,” Maria Phelan, a Downtown Project spokeswoman told me. “He liked the idea of more of a NYU-campus feeling—you don’t know for sure where the campus ends and begins.” I can really appreciate this. I've never liked the tendency of the tech industry to create bubbles (2*entendre) and enclose their campuses and workers.

thomasmarriott 12y ago

This failure reaffirms the most undercelebrated genius of the last century; George Phydias Mitchell — father of fracking, savior of the alpha magnetic spectrometer[edit], pioneer of the particle accelerator, and developer of the most successful master planned community in America; The Woodlands. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_P._Mitchell http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_P._Mitchell

privong 12y ago
> savior of the Hubble, pioneer of the particle accelerator I am skeptical that either of those "titles" are supportable. What I could find in a quick search is that Mitchell gave Texas A&M money to be a founding partner in the Giant Magellan Telescope Consortium[0], which is building a 30m-class telescope in Chile. The particle accelerator you're presumably referencing is the Superconducting Super Collider—canceled in the 90s after massive cost overruns—which he had apparently supported in some fashion[1]. Financial support is obviously necessary, but neither of those make him a "savior" of something he didn't actually finance (Hubble), or a "pioneer" for an experimental technique that had been developed in the 1930s–1960s[2]. [0] http://www.science.tamu.edu/news/story.php?story_ID=806 http://www.science.tamu.edu/news/story.php?story_ID=806 [1] http://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/article/Mitchell-s-35-million-a-gift-to-A-M-physics-1580309.php http://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/article/Mitchell-s-3... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_accelerators_in_particle_physics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_accelerators_in_partic... Edit: I am not saying that he Mitchell did not make significant contributions to the things listed, merely that the titles may be exaggerated.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]

ChuckMcM 12y ago

Interesting piece. The original "hub" of downtown was the Union Plaza train station. If you took a train through Las Vegas that was where it stopped, and it dropped you off right at the "top" of Fremont St. After the railroad pulled out the station was bulldozed into another tower for the Union Plaza hotel. That said, if there is anywhere in Vegas that can be turned into a "walkable" area, it is that area of downtown. I give Tony tremendous props for having the vision to see it. And a few times my parents have urged me to move back and start a tech company there :-) It is still hot though, and it is still undeniably tacky as only Vegas can be. And that is a hard thing to get past.

snowwrestler 12y ago

Over the long term, it's going to take a lot more than $350m to save Vegas. It might not be saveable at all. http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2014/07/lake_mead_before_and_after_colorado_river_basin_losing_water_at_shocking.html http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2014/0...

threefifty 12y ago

A couple months ago I spoke with a friend who is a city planner for a top firm and earned his master's from [one of] the top planning schools in the country. He knows some people involved with this project, and apparently those in charge decided to just wing it rather than hire a professional planning firm. Imagine all of the data you must consider when trying to develop a decent-sized city not only for today, but for 30 years into the future. It's a tremendous undertaking and to just skip out on planning sounded to me like it was a significant contributing factor to the demise of this urban renewal. creating a tech hub that could drive the economy, much in the same way startups are now thriving in places such as Pittsburgh This isn't even remotely true. Pittsburgh has very little in terms of successful startups. Do you want to program in Java and C++ in a cubicle? That's the nature of Pittsburgh's "tech hub." Pittsburgh's economy is driven by education, medicine, banking, steel/glass/aluminum/natgas. Pittsburgh, for instance, has Carnegie Mellon, which has focused on turning campus ideas into new businesses This is why I have to seriously question articles and stories about fields in which I'm not informed. This is absolutely not true. CMU is a joke with regard to startups. DuoLingo, Yinzcam, and Shoefitr are perhaps the only notable ones. There are some robotics startups no one has heard of, but a Stanford English major has a better likelihood of even creating a tech startup than a CMU CS grad.

bsder 12y ago
> This isn't even remotely true. Pittsburgh has very little in terms of successful startups. This wasn't always true in the past. Sadly, the demise of Westinghouse hurt badly. In addition, the upper managers of companies want to be in Cranberry Township, but that's too far away from the colleges. One thing that seems to be common about tech hubs is having the schools and the businesses close to each other. Stanford is buried in Silicon Valley. UT Austin is a quick bus ride from downtown. Boston universities are all over, and it has a very good subway system.
crapshoot101 12y ago
That's absolutely false. To take one example, ModCloth came out of CMU. Way back in the past, Lycos came out of CMU (a multi-billion $ exit back in the old days). More recently, something like Anki is a bunch of CMU engineers; GroupMe's co-founder was a CMU grad. Also, Google has a big hub there, Uber just opened a robotics research facility, Steel is a legacy of Pittsurgh's past, not its current. You're free to complain about Pittsburgh, but some data would be nice.

gonzo 12y ago

Vegas was fine (somewhat great, even) back in the 60s and 70s, when I was growing up there. The the military spending stopped, and a bunch of people moved in from the LA basin.