Get over it, Vegas; Fat City

Some local businessmen busted out the crying towels last weekend and threw themselves a pity party in the pages of the Los Angeles Times. Now, the wipeout of the Las Vegas economy is — or should be — old news to the national media by now. Whatever happened on Main Street, U.S.A., happened here in exponentially worse fashion. But flacks like the Chamber of Commerce‘s Cara Roberts need to quit whining that “The national press doesn’t always understand us as a city.” Oh, boo-frigging-hoo. Cry me a river. The sorry truth is that most of our wounds are self-inflicted. Had the real estate, housing and casino industry not behaved like a bunch of crackheads (with irresponsible banks and PE funds playing the role of street-corner dope pusher), the Great Recession wouldn’t have caught us unawares. Consider: During a three-year skid in which hotel occupancy fell from 90% to 80%, the gaming industry was pumping one über-meta-megaresort after another (Palazzo, Encore, CityCenter, The Cosmopolitan) into a resort economy that had become dubiously premised on absorbing several gazillion ultra-high-end rooms in rapid succession. Last year, the ADR ($105/night) was running slightly above 2005 levels but occupancy (84%) was back where it was in 2002. The good news — for hoteliers — is that ADRs are rebounding, although still well off their dizzying precipice of $132/night in 2007. However, we’re a long way from assimilating those three years of “supply shock.”

Thus it should come as no surprise that Boyd Gaming is “developing plans to enhance the appearance” of Echelon without actually resuming construction. (Do they have Christo‘s phone number?) Why finish a couple of hotels for which little or no demand currently exists — and won’t exist anytime soon? That building wrap on the St(ump) Regis may look rather tatty but it beats the heck of out a bunch of exposed i-beams. Everybody had to have their own CityCenter or Aria and the string of eyesores along the North Strip is the price we now pay.

(Las Vegas Sun columnist J. Patrick Coolican once floated the interesting notion of turning MGM Resorts International‘s vacant ‘CityCenter North’ land into an upscale version of North Las Vegas‘ Broadacres Market Place. It was a logical idea, so of course nothing came of it. If you haven’t been to Broadacres, it’s quite an experience. It’s also a excellent example of public-sector investment that has spurred entrepreneurship. What was once suburban blight is now a hub of commerce and open-air entertainment.)

Getting back to enablers like Roberts, I’d like to point out that what now appear to be open civic sores were festering just under the skin during the ‘good times.’ Doctors’ offices were overcrowded and insufficiently staffed (and trying to book a psychiatrist — fughedaboudit!), crime was already high, the cops trigger-happy, housing-construction defects were rampant, and you crossed the street at your own peril. Growth doesn’t pay for itself after all and our hard landing hasn’t exactly been cushioned by deadbeats like the Chamber of Commerce, who would rather drink their own urine than pay one penny of gross revenue in taxes … just sock it to Big Gaming and the tourists, right? While Roberts’ corporate masters get a free ride, the city continues to rot. A largely abandoned mall near our home is finally getting a new, big-box tenant … a Savers thrift store. There’s your “attracting new business,” folks.

Hell, the casinos are so whipped by the CoC that they not only have dropped the late J. Terrence Lanni‘s call for a gross-receipts tax … they ran and hid from the idea of even a net-income tax. Economic hostage-taker Monte Miller “reached out” (read: “threatened”) a gaming tax hike to 9%, which would still be the lowest in the nation but just 0.5% below New Jersey, with its much smaller casino industry. Voters would have approved it in a heartbeat, so gaming bosses weren’t entirely unjustified in quavering before Miller’s wrath. Ironically, Mad Monte is part of the braintrust at Nevada Policy Research Institute, a stalking horse for Sheldon “Tex” Adelson, one of the bigger taxpayers in the casino industry. I hope old Tex likes Monte’s curious form of gratitude.

On a lighter note, the LAT piece gratuitously blames Las Vegas’ worst-dressed image on “bedraggled, white-sock-wearing tourists.” Frankly, most of the tourists I meet are better-dressed than the average Las Vegan. We’re not a city full of hobos — we just like to dress the part. Sin City citizens need to pull up their jeans, cover those tramp stamps and stop thinking that a T-shirt is “formal attire.”

General Hospital. We’ve had another “medical episode” at the all-too-aptly named Heart Attack Grill. But don’t hate on the Heart Attack, disgusting though it is: It’s simply the grossest manifestation of a ballooning number of Las Vegas eateries — especially on the Strip — that cater to tourists’ demand for “comfort food.” Hardly a week goes by without a press release announcing another one of these cholesterol factories, boasting of the ubiquitous sliders and fries cooked in duck fat or something of that ilk. They’re usually accompanied by a photograph of food swimming in grease, which sends you into cardiac arrest just looking at it. Hell, at a recent Lakeside Grill crab bake, management felt compelled to top off crab, lobster, shrimp and yet more crab with — you guessed it — sliders and fries. (At which point I’m afraid I erupted into profanity.) I don’t want to sound like Steve Wynn with his holier-than-thou vegan zealotry but food on the Strip is getting pretty gross. No wonder so many of us are huffing up the escalator and learning to love (well, tolerate) diet soda. Fighting the new Battle of the Bulge is an occupational hazard for local media, given the amount of hamburger buns, croquettes and breaded foods we are proffered. You think caterers were being paid by the carbohydrate.