Las Vegas will be laughed at for the duration of a news cycle when the implosion takes place. But Americans have a short memory. It would be best for us to get this embarrassment over with as soon as we can.

No Harmon, no foul.

Whose oversight was it to leave out the most iconic property of them all, Westward Ho???

Yeah, I was thinking the same thing when I saw the headline. A quick calculation shows that Nevada has a mere 0.66 percentage of this pie, hardly anything special.
That said, I salute the actual companies in Nevada that are thriving and advancing against the tide of this bleak economy. May the number 33 grow in leaps and bounds.

Det_Munch
Good riposte to the inanity directly above your post.

As for what Las Vegas needs to do, it DOES need to think forward and let go of this fantasy that yesteryear's formula is ever going to return us to the charmed life once enjoyed here. A lot of this nostalgia for yesterday is off-base anyway, as Las Vegas has often been through hard times, such as post-911, when many lost their employment. And it wasn't libertarianism that saved Vegas from it's biggest brush with extinction in the last century -- it was the mammoth government expenditure and influx of workers, otherwise known as the building of the Hoover Dam. Then came WWII and a military presence, for ever after.

So, myths about yesteryear aside, what do we do? We genuinely "reinvent ourselves." We have no where but up to go in educating our local workforce. Emphasis on the 3R's in K-12 would finally give us a competitive workforce, like that of our successful neighbors to the east in Utah enjoy. But ours would also have a *huge* bilingual advantage. The one thing -- only thing-- Carolyn Goodman has said which was sensible and which we should capitalize on, is that real estate and the general cost of living in So. Nevada are extremely competitive when compared with So. Cal, Nor. Cal, or anywhere back East. Our geographic locus is quite propitious, vis-a-vis California, the Southwest, the Mountain States, and any transcontinental activity.
I could go on and on. But the point is, we have more potential here than we realize. We just need to roll up our sleeves and start making hay. Simply hoping for more weekend gamblers from L.A. to come so that we can earn tips parking their cars is sheer buffoonery.

This is why that new Rhodes development near Red Rock should not be approved. The community has the right to ward off yet more disastrous over-development. Just as you can't plop down a factory in the middle of a residential neighborhood, you can't keep dumping yet more inventory that further destroys our home values. Somalia is just not that great a place to emulate, folks.

The view of CityCenter isn't actually that bad, when you're on the inside, looking up and around. Unfortunately, from the outside it just isn't that enticing. And there's really nothing unique going on in there that doesn't already exist, up and down the Strip.

The more moderate investments, here and there, are far more advisable than the monumental waste we saw in the past decade. As long as the Ferris wheels don't keel over in the high winds we get here (seriously, I worry about that), I don't see them as hurting, only helping.

...I'm scratching my head. Why? Because I find myself, THOROUGHLY agreeing with ALL that Olbuddy says. Olbuddy and I have butted heads more than once. Which might be all you need to know about just how off the mark the premise of this story is. Sorry John Curtas and VegasInc. I really appreciate all you do. But...
1) Anything with Wolfgang Puck's name in it is merely a *chain restaurant.* Don't be silly. He and most of the other brand name chefs listed above have places all over the country and are NOT doing the cooking for you. They're not even based in Vegas, let alone, supervise the kitchens. The food you get from their chain outlets is repetitious and overpriced.
2) The prices for anything on the strip is a rip-off. And there are very few good places off the strip, for that matter. Sure, there are some tasty hole-in-the-wall places each of us can think of. For example, I just discovered 'The Verdict's In,' Downtown -- superb little place for lunch! However...
3) The AAA, Michelin, et al. rankings are bought and paid for. Last year, Tokyo 'boasted' more three-star Michelin restaurants than any other city in the world. The Japanese press rejected this outright, identifying it for what it was -- a Michelin marketing ploy as they try to expand their brand in Japan.
3) Travel out of town, just as Olbuddy describes, and you'll find all kinds of genuine, freshly and originally cooked dishes, EVERYWHERE. It is positively ridiculous to suggest that Vegas has better eateries than Los Angeles, SF, Boston, or any other great American city. Ever been to Pittsburgh? Memphis? I can think of endless other cities --small and large -- that put Vegas to shame.

Flattering and congratulating ourselves helps no one.

As for the charges made by some that Clark County is at fault: I don't claim to know. Yes, you would think they have the ultimate oversight responsibility. I do know that the third party -- Converse -- had the inspection responsibilities delegated to them. I do not know if this is the widespread practice elsewhere in the country. For precisely what happened here, this practice of delegating inspections to private companies (companies that are hired and paid by the contractor, no less) should be terminated. If the county doesn't have the manpower to physically inspect every last project that was simultaneously being slapped together during the go-go years of the past decade, then dammit, maybe that's a sign that growth was out of control. In the least, the county should have demanded special funding from the various developers for the temporary hiring of out-of-state inspectors; just as much of the union manpower for construction was "borrowed" from other locals, maybe the same should have been arranged to properly man-up the inspection work force.
In any event, I won't defend Clark County against the accusations made by others. If nothing else, they didn't make waves when they should have when they realized they were obviously undermanned. The building commissioners and county commissioners and various city councilors were, indeed, corrupt, in that they just wanted growth, growth, and more growth. To hell with the risks. Bruce Woodbury, Oscar Goodman, and all the public officials of the past decade are the true villains, here.

It has GOT to be brought down. Imagine it a trembler did take this down, and here we had had the chance to safely demolish it. Perini is at fault for their lack of oversight as the general contractor which hired Converse Consulting (which was the third party that signed off on each of the inspection documents without actually bothering to do the inspections). And now Perini is simply being scumbags by trying to halt the demolition and convince everybody that the building is safe, just so that they can avoid paying the piper. Don't ever want to see Perini's name (or another incarnation of them) on a construction sight in this Valley, again.

...More absurdities from the Peanut Gallery, I see.

The good folks at the LVCVA work hard for conventioneers and tourists, all on behalf of Las Vegas. The Bum besmirches all the hard work. Just maybe, this ceremonial post is how we can keep him stowed and out of the way, until he's too far gone to get up off his bar stool at the Plaza.