City Center in Las Vegas Underperforming
The big news last year was Las Vegas’ City Center. It was a billion dollar renovation of the gambling location that promised to revamp the city. Las Vegas suffered a huge blow during the recession. Numbers were down drastically over the past eighteen months and now the entire state of Nevada is still reeling. City Center is a complex filled with movie theaters, shopping, office buildings, hotel space and gambling locations. Developers were hoping that it was going to help turn the local economy around. Unfortunately, it hasn’t. The added growth of online gambling sites hasn’t helped.
The Las Vegas Strip has suffered in income just like the rest of the world’s economy. In fact, cities in the US that relied upon gambling as their sole or predominant revenue stream ended up in difficult positions with the recession. They were a lot like Detroit, Michigan. Detroit was known for its automobile manufacturing industry. When the automobile industry came crashing down pre-recession, it meant that the manufacturing plants began closing one by one. That was difficult news for the thousands of people employed at the plants and for the state’s economy that was dependent on manufacturing as revenue.
The same thing happened with cities that relied on gambling. Las Vegas in particular was hard-hit. Studies have shown that within the city, 60% of homes are either in foreclosure or the owners are in some form of default on their mortgages. That is why so many residents and legislators were depending on the City Center to bring them out of the financial difficulties. They were hoping the gambling mega- center would be the answer and spur more gamblers into the area. MGM has thus far had one problem with City Center after another. During development, many of the mid-level to high-priced condominium units have remained unsold, retail outlets have not seen the numbers they hoped for and convention centers have not been booked as anticipated. All together these are creating a problem for Las Vegas and MGM. Now they are facing the fact that though people are once again gambling, they are also very picky with their gambling activities. It may take a long time for Las Vegas to return to its old revenue levels it did pre-recession. Hopefully City Center will be instrumental in the turnaround.
Tags: City Center, Las Vegas, recession, revenue
