How Southern Nevada stacks up to other regions trying to attract businesses to their area, out-of-state executives weigh in this week on Nevada Week.

♪♪♪ Support for Nevada Week is provided by Senator William H. Hernstadt.

Welcome to Nevada Week.

I'm Amber Renee Dixon.

The Las Vegas Global Economic Alliance recently held its annual economic development event at UNLV's Thomas & Mack Center.

And among the panelists who spoke were out-of-state business owners who the LVGEA had wined and dined during an extended weekend in Las Vegas that ended with tickets to the Super Bowl.

Tina Quigley is President and CEO of the LVGEA and sat down with me to explain the role these recruiting events play in the highly competitive game of economic development.

So Tina, you are in the business of attracting businesses to Southern Nevada.

And at your annual economic development event, you mentioned Texas and Arizona as Southern Nevada's biggest competitors in this arena, adding, quote, We are not prepared for that level of competition.

(Tina Quigley) So we have had the luxury of being a state that really hasn't had to be that scrappy as it relates to economic development.

We have had it rain in the form of hospitality and gaming for several decades, which is great.

It has made our community a prosperous community, except for when it doesn't, when we go through those periods of bust.

And it really hits us hard.

And that's when we feel the need, that we need to diversify our economy.

So these states that have been working for decades in terms of building up all the resources required for competing for and attracting these companies, they've got a head start on us.

But that's all right.

We are scrappy.

And as one thing we talked about, and I think it came across in our event, we are a community that can pull together, and we can be scrappy too.

-What do you mean by "scrappy"?

-By scrappy I mean we are ready, I believe, to lure the industries.

We're going to have to be very targeted in terms of what these industries are.

And we, I think, have collectively agreed that we want high-skill or high-wage type jobs to start showing up here, which means we're going to have to build the facilities, inventory the assets that we have, truly have a collective understanding of the assets we have for, say, health tech, biotech, fintech and then evangelize that we have these and then also be working with our workforce partners to pump out the pipeline of talent that's required to secure this.

And I say scrappy because, when I talk with the university presidents and our education and workforce partners, they're all in.

They say, Tell us what you need, and we will figure out how to pump out that workforce.

So it's-- I guess that's what I mean by scrappy is everybody is kind of willing to bootstrap up, figure out what it is.

What do we need in terms of facilities?

So we need wet lab space for biotech.

Talking with our brokers, who's willing to-- talking with UMC, talking with Roseman, where can we get additional wet lab space to attract these resources?

-When you talk about workforce development in that pipeline, how do you take the base of the population here and make them more highly skilled or educated?

-So that is a work in process.

We do have a trainable workforce.

We know that.

We need to figure out what we need to train them in and then attracting them to those industries.

There is some lag time associated with that.

People who are in their jobs and secure in their jobs and they see a new industry entering the market, it's going to take a little while before they feel confident that that is truly an industry that's going to be around and is worthy for training, worthy of training for.

So when I say scrappy as well, I think we do have a pretty risk-tolerant and a community that's willing to try things.

So hopefully-- well, I shouldn't say hopefully.

I think we will see that our transition period should be shorter than the several decades that it's taken for other states.

But again, we're gonna have to be clear and targeted and collaborative.

-And these jobs, that will require a four-year college degree?

-Not all of them.

Some of them are beyond four years.

I think at the event, you heard from one of the participants from our LOCATE program, Yoona Kim from a company called Arien, which is out of San Francisco, that she's going to require some highly skilled engineers and even scientists and PhDs as she considers her move here.

Now, some of that she'll be able to transport, she'll bring from San Francisco, but she is having conversations with UNLV and with Roseman University to develop a very specific program that will pump out the type of employees that she needs.

And she also said yesterday that she is talking with her peers in San Francisco about the fact that we have these university systems that are willing to do that and work with her.

That to me is kind of scrappy.

That to me is, again, putting the bootstraps on, using the power of networking, using the power of relationships and just really impressing these companies that we can do it.

-Her company is a biotech company?

-Yes, she's a biotech platform company.

-But I wish I had the exact statistic.

But when we talk about the population here and so many people simply having a high school degree, I don't see how you're going to get to beyond four years of college.

-With the programs that we have?

-Well, with getting the workforce that is available here.

-So some of the companies that we're talking to will have to bring people from out of state, and we know that.

And they may even come from UNR.

UNR has got some strong programs in the engineering, in medicine.

But that's okay, right?

Because that starts to create a cluster.

That starts to create a meme.

The more that we can grow-- and that's the way you're going to do it is to start to grow in small clusters these industries that then start to attract more.

And that whole cycle of creating that-- now we've got that whole cycle of creating the workforce, attracting the companies, creating the workforce, attracting the companies.

There's really no other way to do it.

We can't create the workforce until we know we've got the companies, and the companies are going to not show up unless they know they can get the workforce.

So it is a cycle.

But just because we haven't ever educated to a higher level or attracted companies that require a higher level doesn't mean we shouldn't.

Yeah, the definition of a prosperous economy is one that is slowly but surely growing and the wages and the education levels are also slowly but surely growing.

-I wasn't aware "slowly" is included in that definition.

Back to what makes Southern Nevada competitive for businesses.

There are metrics used to measure this.

And when you look at those, what concerns you most about Southern Nevada?

-What's concerning them?

It depends on the industry that we're talking about.

-Okay.

-And it depends on the region that we're looking at as where we're trying to attract.

So if we're trying to attract from a state like California, certainly our advantages are fairly clear.

If we're trying to attract from a state like Boston, much harder.

I will tell you-- -Why?

-Because of the education level and the pay level and also the perceived quality of life.

We have to work very hard at overcoming the image that we are Las Vegas.

We've done such a great job of branding ourselves as Las Vegas that it's hard to look past that definition of Las Vegas.

Getting the companies to come visit us from the East Coast is a little harder than getting companies to come visit us from the western part of the United States.

But I've never had a company who has spent time here say, I had no idea.

I had no idea that once you step off the sidewalk from the Strip and you move east, west, north, south that you find that Southern Nevada is just really another desert Southwest community very much like something you'd find in Scottsdale.

We have communities.

We have schools.

And I know that that's debatable that-- we love to say we're the nation's 48th worst in-- yeah, we're the nation's 48th worst.

-In education.

-But we have pockets of areas where we have quality public schools.

We have amazing public charter schools.

Data is showing that we rank at or above national levels in our public charter schools.

In our CTE, our magnet schools, they're award-winning at a national level.

So getting the opportunity to tell the narrative ourselves, look them in the eye, show them the communities where you can live, show them we have a cultural center with the Smith Center, we have a downtown Arts District, they're surprised.

But they're never-- the one thing that's most surprising to them is the sense of community.

I like to say we're a population of 2.5 million, and I know all 50 of them.

[laughter] It's not very hard to become part of the fabric of the community.

-I want to talk about hard numbers, because at the event, you spoke about how tax-friendly Nevada is compared to competitors like Arizona-- -Tax climate, yeah.

- --and Texas.

So Nevada is ranked 7th most friendly in the country.

California, for comparison, 48th; Arizona, 14th; Texas, 13th.

So they're very close to Nevada.

-They are close.

-What about in housing, cost of groceries?

-So we currently, and these metrics are from 2023, we are-- the three of us, Dallas, Phoenix, Las Vegas, we go up and down as it relates to kind of the cost of living baskets.

So groceries, housing, utilities, transportation, healthcare.

If you look at us over the past five--less than that--past three years, we kind of all fluctuate up and down, but we are very competitive in cost of living with those other districts.

We are ranked 7th in terms of tax friendliness, tax climate friendliness for businesses.

We don't have-- much like Texas, we don't have the personal income tax.

The challenge where we lose sometimes in terms of competing against them is that they have very aggressive economic development incentive programs, so tax abatements or tax incentives or just incentive packages.

And I shared the story that we were so excited.

We thought we had a company out of Southern California, a high-tech company, who wanted to be in Las Vegas, was, before the holidays was in conversations about leasing property and about doing tenant improvements.

And they, after-- went silent during the holidays.

They called us up after the holidays and said, Hey, we didn't want to go to Texas, but they met or they exceeded the abatement, tax abatement package that we were offering.

But they also were offering 20 acres of free land.

And we-- that's just not something that we do.

And so the point being if Texas wants a company, Texas is going to get the company.

And all we can do is work as hard as we can to get them to see our community, to get to see, you know, all the assets that we've got.

-When you say that is something we do not do, can't that be changed?

Land?

Money?

-I don't think the state has land to be able to give away, and I don't think-- -Much of it is owned.

-Yeah, BLM.

And I, you know, for the municipalities, some of them own land, and they do-- they also have redevelopment areas, but I don't think they'd be able to match that offer.

-What about the tax abatements?

-So even our tax abatements are not as prolific as several other states.

And we're starting to have conversations.

I know legislators are interested, as we prepare for next session, in reviewing the abatement package that we have and taking a look and inventorying what other states have.

It may be that we don't necessarily want to give more away, but that we might want to be more targeted in the industries and generous in the industries that we are trying to specifically attract.

Right now our tax abatement package is very general for any type of industry that has over 50 employees and is willing to invest $5 million in capital or $1 million in capital if it's just an office-type job and pay at the state average wage.

But we may-- the legislature may choose several other ways of looking at attraction.

-Correct me if I'm wrong, but were you getting emotional when you talked about the Texas story?

-Yes.

It was so-- I was so excited for that one.

It was just going to be a great win for us.

It was going to be great storytelling.

It was going to be a great opportunity to connect them with the universities in terms of workforce.

They had over 100 employees paying over $100,000 a year in Las Vegas, $100,000 a year salary is a good salary.

100 jobs?

That's awesome.

I mean, it would have helped start to change the narrative and shift, you know, shift-- help shift the diversification.

So yeah, a little sad about that one.

It's all right.

We'll keep going.

-What Southern Nevada does have, though, according to you, is the ability to foster relationships and, there were-- -We do.

- --companies at the event that testified to that.

They were part of the LOCATE Las Vegas initiative, which we're going to talk about, but let's first hear from those companies.

-I think for us, having this one degree of separation that we were able to experience during the LOCATE event and having spent a lot of my career in New York and Los Angeles, that is certainly not the case.

It really is a big city, but a small community.

And the amount of people we met, I mean, having time with the governor, knowing that, whether it's business or personal, we're really one phone call away.

-I felt like the one resounding thing I kept hearing here but I felt, actually really felt, is that sense of community.

And I think that's what you all do so well, you make everyone feel like you're part of the community.

And I think just advertising that.

I didn't know that about Las Vegas before I came to this event.

-It feels different because being in LA for the amount of time I've been working there, there's not the spirit of getting business done.

And it feels like here, that's a big difference, that people want to find ways how to make things happen, as opposed to how to not make things happen.

-Okay.

So relationships, as you were talking about, you're hearing it straight from them.

But let me clarify something because then you get up, you do your presentation, and you start off by talking about the economic development industry is so data reliant.

Yet here you are pitching relationships as a motivator for businesses to move here.

You can't quantify relationships.

What kind of data is that?

-Right.

Isn't that interesting?

But I have to tell you in the end-- you have to have a business case for why they want to move here.

They're not going to move here if it's bad for business.

But in the end, everybody wants to be in a community where they and their employees feel a part of something, right?

And the only way that you can do that is to get them here and to get them to experience it.

You can't put it in data, which is why I was so, you know-- I was resistant at first at the concept LOCATE because I was worried that it was, it looked like a party for the Super Bowl, and we're inviting CEOs to come party in Las Vegas.

And I was scared to death.

But that's not what it was.

In the end, it was a lot of work.

It was a lot of work to identify the companies that we felt were worthy of coming.

We asked them to come in three days early, had to.

They had to spend two full days with us ahead of the Super Bowl.

So all day Friday and all day Saturday.

They came in-- they had to be there Thursday night.

And we hosted them at various locations where they could get to see we had a sense of culture, we had a sense of community.

So the Smith Center, the UNLV medical school.

We took them out to the Aces headquarters because we wanted them to see Mark Davis had built a women's practice facility that matched any NFL practice facility, the commitment to that.

We took them around the community to see it.

So 2 1/2 days.

And in-- and then we did breakout sessions.

They met over 150 people while they were here.

We did breakout sessions based specifically on their industry so that they could talk to their peer CEOs or the workforce development people or the brokers that specialized in their industry so that if they choose to move here, they are immediately connected, all the dots.

There's no work for them to do.

And actually that work started even prior to LOCATE.

So about-- prior to Super Bowl, wasn't quite six months, but we started making the invitations and doing the outreach.

In fact, there was one company who announced, Thrill One, that they're moving here.

And actually our relationship with them started six months ago when we had heard that they were interested.

And they were considering, Do we stay in California, or do we move here?

And they were pitting us and California, seeking tax incentives but also talking to California about incentives.

And it wasn't until we started having this relationship, and even prior to the event, having them come out, connect with the community, getting to know them.

And in the end, they did decide to move here.

-What were the qualifications for these companies to be a part of this?

-You need to be a company that was in a targeted industry, so an industry that we felt was appropriate that we had the assets to actually start.

If we could start a cluster, get companies here, we actually have the assets to start and the workforce to start to grow on.

They had to be what we call a high-wage company.

So paying 125% of the state's average wage, which right now is a little less than $30 an hour.

Let's see.

And of course they needed to be a company that was real, that had no-- the background check.

-And considering relocating.

-Truly considering relocating, yeah.

We didn't go after companies that were-- we didn't invite any companies that were not really considering relocating.

I will tell you, I appreciate that a lot of companies who said no when I call, when we reach out to them, were very candid in saying, Love to come to Super Bowl, but we are not, we're not thinking about moving or thinking about moving to Las Vegas at all.

-The Thrill One Entertainment, Sports & Entertainment, the Nevada Current in their writeup of the economic development event said that this company already had deep ties to Las Vegas, had already received approval for tax abatements.

I think suggesting, why are you wining and dining a company that's already set to come?

-Right.

-How would you respond?

-I would respond that they were still, were still kind of pitting us against California as I understand it, and they're welcome to talk to Thrill One directly.

But again, I think that the, all the pre-work prior to that helped them and helped their employees start to feel comfortable, because they had said that they didn't think their employees wanted to move.

-I'm glad you bring that up, because they did talk about the information they gathered that they were able to share with their employees.

Let's listen to those sound bites.

-There's a lot of concern, I would say, with production-- with studios and networks bringing business to Las Vegas, because everybody's impression is the Strip.

So that's what they think it's all about.

And so they, I had one executive at a network say, They're just gonna go and get drunk and gamble all their money away.

And I'm like, It's not true.

My family who lives here, they never go to the Strip.

They have their normal lives.

And so some people it's good to come here for that period of time, but people who work here build their lives.

And so, you know, one of the things, I really hadn't had a full tour or full understanding of Las Vegas because I usually go to my parents' house.

I come here for events.

But to see-- to be able to get the helicopter tour and to be able to meet with all the different cities, I mean, it was really a great experience because everybody was there to talk about the different areas.

And it's kind of unique in the amount of diversity of areas here, as well.

-Whether it was real estate agents, schools, hospitals, communities, and being able to share about the hiking trails and about the performing arts center and it's not just the Strip.

For the last two months before I moved was really helpful to show people all that Nevada has to offer.

-So we talked about the Vegas stereotypes that you battle.

And through this program, you're getting people to actually come out and see it for themselves.

I heard Jay Torres, he was with the production studio, he has a production studio, mention a helicopter tour.

So how much did this cost?

Where did the money come from?

-The amount of money that we raised was well over a million dollars.

And when I say "we," it was a collective group of private sector and public sector.

Not all the money was spent, but it was-- these are expensive.

These are expensive endeavors to cram into one weekend all the stuff that we want to show.

Now, we had calculated, we needed to know the ROI.

Let's say, What is the ROI?

And we learned that if we just had one company that had at least 15 employees that paid 125% of the state's average wage, that we would break even on the investment.

-All 16 companies?

-No, if one.

Just one company, yeah.

So we're pretty happy that the number of companies that continue to be interested and really, truly continue to want to have conversations is well above the number one.

-How many do you think are going to move here?

Are any?

-I will tell you that our team, Mitch Keenan, who is our Business Development VP managing this project, is in regular communications with 15 of them.

We have one who said that until-- they're holding off until they get a certain amount of money raised.

15 of them continue to plan their next trip out here.

You know, I don't want to-- I don't want to jinx it by saying the exact number, but I think by 12 to 18 months, over half of the companies that we talk to will probably have some type of an announcement or some type of expansion at least.

Maybe they're not packing up their 100 employees.

We have one company out of Poland with 500 employees.

He's not packing up his entire, but I have a feeling they will probably have a presence here.

-We're running out of time, but I want to get to Jay Torres again.

When asked--because he's in the film industry--what could happen here to encourage the growth of that industry, his first answer was tax incentives.

That has been a big topic.

Last legislative session, there was a bill proposed, $190 million in annual tax credits over 20 years.

That did not pass, didn't get a vote in either House.

Where did the LVGEA stand on that?

-So we're neutral at this point.

We really, of course, are excited.

If you were to ask me, would this industry-- if the film tax passed and the industry came, would it impact Southern Nevada, it would most certainly impact Southern Nevada.

The question in terms of that industry growth--the clusters, the adjacent businesses and industries that would move here as a result--the question that I'm not competent enough to ask is what the ROI is.

What is the true ROI on that incentive award versus what shows up in terms of economic impact?

We will spend as much time as we can, get as smart as we can so we can have a very competent and confident response.

-Tina Quigley, you are more than two years into your tenure leading the LVGEA.

Thank you so much for joining us.

-Thank you.

I always enjoy spending time with you.

-And thank you for watching.

For any of the resources discussed, go to our website, vegaspbs.org/nevadaweek.

And I'll see you next week on Nevada Week.