As Clark County leaders work to help diversify the region’s tourism-heavy economy, an outsourcing arrangement is at the forefront of those efforts for its unincorporated areas.
The county is working with North Star, a place branding firm out of Tennessee, to provide an “economic development brand” and marketing program to help peg unincorporated Clark County as a desirable place to do business.
North Star is charged with creating a plan that would make unincorporated Clark County—which includes the Strip, UNLV, Harry Reid International Airport, and outlier Las Vegas communities such as Spring Valley and Paradise—attractive to those who might be interested in moving a business, or starting one, here.
North Star has produced a slogan—“bright beyond the lights”—and plans to soon reveal a new logo for unincorporated Clark County. The agreement calls for North Star to receive about $350,000 for the work.
“The county has a vision; we’re just helping to implement it,” said Will Ketchum, president of North Star. “Gaming has made Las Vegas, but it’s also a dominant industry, and any community with a dominant industry is wise to make long-term plans to diversify around it. You don’t want to have too many eggs in one basket. There are segments like health services and transportation and logistics that Clark County can really grow into.”
Much of the effort is focused on California residents, said Shani Coleman, director of community and economic development for Clark County. She gets weekly calls from California business owners who express interest in what Clark County has to offer.
One of the draws for California transplants continues to be the cost of living in the Las Vegas Valley, including home prices. According to U.S. Census Bureau statistics, more than 122,000 Californians moved to Nevada from 2015 through 2019.
In December, the median sales price for an existing home in the six-county region that includes Los Angeles was close to $698,000, according to real estate data firm DQ News. In Las Vegas for that same month, the median price for a home was $425,000, according to the Las Vegas Realtors trade organization.
“A person in California could have a business or relocate their home to Clark County and have a lower cost of living and better quality of life,” Coleman said. “That’s what we want to home in on.”
Since around 24 million people live in the Southern California region—where wildfire dangers and traffic congestion also exist—there’s likely to be many more who will make the switch in the coming years.
“Southern California has been reaching out to us for a while,” Coleman said. “From our research, we know people understand what Las Vegas is, they just maybe don’t know what’s beyond Las Vegas. Some people don’t realize that, yes, we have real neighborhoods.”
In late 2020, the county commissioned a study to look at what its economy needs to adapt and grow. In that 96-page report, provided by government and industry think tank SRI International, it was noted that the area’s economy “remains dominated by low-wage and low-skill occupations such as food preparation and serving, and retail sales.”
When economic conditions in the U.S. go sideways, people have less money to spend on things like dinners out, trips to casinos and, of course, visits to Las Vegas, which means the economy in Southern Nevada suffers.
Just in the past 15 years, that proved to be true twice, once during the Great Recession and once during the pandemic-induced economic downturn.
Coleman said county leaders decided to outsource the marketing work because of the specific type of branding work that firms like North Star offer.
With specific areas to focus on—sports entertainment being one that has exploded in recent years—Coleman said the firms have plenty of material to worth with.
“Look at what happened here with sports,” Coleman said. “We have pro hockey, pro football and maybe Major League Soccer and Major League Baseball. Each time we add a layer of new industry, it creates new opportunities. There could be a lot of new opportunities in sports medicine, for example.”
To help in the effort, North Star subcontracted with a New York marketing and branding firm called Development Counsellors International (DCI). DCI has worked with states like Florida and Texas and cities such as Seattle and Cincinnati.
Kat Saunders, a senior vice president with DCI, said her firm specializes in economic development.
“Quality of life is important, and that’s something that Clark County offers,” Saunders said.
She agreed with Coleman that the array of sports entertainment options in Las Vegas can be a draw for many.
“People can come to Clark County and have all the amenities that they’d have in a city like Los Angeles or New York,” Saunders said. “We’re taking those types of stories outside of Southern Nevada, where people there already know what they have.”
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