Las Vegas Vacation Blog Blog

The Las Vegas City Council today unanimously approved moving a location for a planned commemorative for American veterans from Huntridge Circle Park to Heritage Park along North Las Vegas Boulevard in a city’s downtown area.The council decided to dedicate about 1.5 acres of Heritage Park for a development of a Las Vegas Veterans Memorial, whose supporters envision it featuring about 17 larger-than-life bronze as well as stainless steel sculptures created by Douwe Blumberg.Blumberg’s concept was picked last year among four finalists from around a country who competed for a project.

The move from Huntridge Park, which did draw some opposition from some internal veterans about public safety in Heritage Park, was finished mostly to allow for better public access as well as parking, according to Mick Catron, president of a Las Vegas Veterans Memorial Foundation.”It absolutely complements which Cultural Corridor,” Catron said, referring to a corridor of Las Vegas Boulevard which includes Cashman Center, Lied Discovery Childrens Museum/Las Vegas Library as well as a Las Vegas Natural History Museum, a Neon Museum, a Old Las Vegas Mormon Fort as well as State Historic Park as well as a Reed Whipple Cultural Center.
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Talk about rolling the dice and expecting a big payoff. Sir Philip Green, the owner of Arcadia Group, parent company of Topshop, is gambling that Topshop’s latest collection, Dress Up, will have him in the chips when the retail chain’s flagship store opens in Las Vegas next March.

The retail outpost will cost the high street magnate approximately $10 million to build, but he was sanguine about the move. He told WWD, “Dress Up, is just that: very elaborate, embellished pieces in fine silks and satin with beading and sequins. It will probably do quite well in Las Vegas, where we’ll have a bigger assortment of ‘going out’ apparel. Dresses is one of our strongest areas and evening shoes is also one of our strongest sellers. We’ll buy deeper into those categories.”

The UK’s largest privately owned clothing retailer with more than 2,500 outlets is striking while the iron is hot. Operating profit for Arcadia Group which includes Topshop and Topman as well as Miss Selfridge, Wallis and others was up 10 percent to £279.6m, with cash generation of £386.2 million, up £43 million for the fiscal year ended August 2010.
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Las Vegas bills itself as the entertainment capital of the world, but it should promote another strength that gets virtually no attention — its specialization in green architecture and construction services.

So says the co-author of a study released today by the Brookings Institution think tank in Washington on the nation’s clean economy, made up of industries that help save energy and water, support renewable resources and boost mass transit.

But green architecture jobs make up only a sliver of the clean economy. Brookings found that both the Las Vegas metropolitan area and Nevada as a whole are below average when it comes to creating jobs for the entire clean economy.

Brookings senior fellow Mark Muro said Las Vegas has one of the nation’s highest concentrations of jobs devoted to green architecture and construction versus the overall job market. There were 2,507 such jobs in Southern Nevada as of last year, producing a concentration seven times higher than the national average.

Muro, who doubles as co-director of Brookings Mountain West, a research collaboration with UNLV, said construction of the massive CityCenter on the Strip likely had a lot to do with the presence of such employers in Las Vegas. Since 2003, when there were just 157 green architecture and construction jobs in town, that employment sector has grown by more than 48 percent annually, Brookings found.

“You have an astonishing concentration of those jobs,” Muro said. “CityCenter was a massive LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) project that brought green architecture and construction companies to the region. So you have the talent in place. You may want to market that expertise both regionally and globally to other places that are arid, like the Middle East and Asia. You should build on your strengths based on the concentrations you have.”

The global architecture firm Gensler, cited by Brookings, is an example of a green architecture and construction company that has thrived in Las Vegas. Gensler served as CityCenter’s executive architect, helping the project become the world’s largest sustainable development that stresses energy savings.

“Nevada instituted a series of tax incentives to encourage the major employers in Nevada to undertake sustainable development,” said J.F. Finn III, a Gensler principal and managing director. “Green development quickly begets green consultants and contractors to service them.”
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A SQUARE OF OUR OWN

For all the debate about what downtown Las Vegas is or isn’t, what it should or should not be, what it needs is simple: It needs Harvard Square.

Of course, you can’t just pick up and plop down an entire neighborhood — imagine the jet lag — but you can learn from one, mimicking its strengths while adapting it for a different environment. And if there’s one to mimic, it’s Harvard Square, the historic town center in Cambridge, Mass., right next to some old university.

If you’ve never visited the square, here’s what you need to know: It’s absolutely packed with locally owned, interesting businesses and busy from morning until morning nearly every day of the week.

There’s an independent bookstore next to a homegrown hardware shop with window displays that make you want to buy duct tape and wrenches. There’s a women’s boutique down the block from a local florist and a tobacco shop that feels straight out of a period film and doesn’t sell belly rings. There are restaurants — whimsical fine dining, Indian buffets, thin-crust pizzas and a brew pub named after — who else? — John Harvard.

There are record stores, comic shops and a few token chains thrown in the mix. And all of it is crammed into one walkable, vibrant, day-and-night destination.
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Of all the places in the United States to get a glimpse into the life of the stars, perhaps no two destinations offer more than Las Vegas and Los Angeles. And given the proximity of the two, it’s completely possible - even convenient - to hit both glamorous destinations in one trip.

In fact, reliving the famous car trips made in movies such as “Swingers” and “The Hangover” can be one of the attractions of such a trip. And nothing quite compares to the surreal experience of seeing the Vegas lights emerge over the barren desert landscape.

Starting your trip from either direction is easy, as cheap flights to Las Vegas are widely available because of its popularity as a tourist destination, and deals can also be easily found on Los Angeles vacation packages. However you choose to do it, be sure to check out the following destinations along the way:

Hollywood: Check out the Hollywood Walk of Fame along Vine Street for a who’s-who of showbiz past and present while keeping your eyes peeled for stars in the flesh. If you’re lucky, you may be able to get a glimpse of stars on the red carpet heading into a premiere at Grauman’s Chinese Theatre.

The Sunset Strip: The strip contains rock clubs made famous in the ’70s and ’80s, including Whisky a Go Go and Roxy. Many celebrities live in the Hollywood Hills above the strip, making it a prime spot for stargazing.

Beverly Hills: Also a haven for many stars, Beverly Hills features the famed Rodeo Drive, which features some of the most exclusive shops and restaurants in the country. It presents a great opportunity for splurging if you have expensive tastes, or just for people watching if you don’t. The city also features some of the most exclusive hotels in Los Angeles, where you never know who may be passing through the doors.

The Vegas Strip: Perhaps nowhere in America is decadence more on display than on the Vegas Strip. Take in one of the many running shows given by the likes of Celine Dion or Wayne Newton. In Vegas, you’re just as likely to spot stars in the audience - or in the casinos, clubs or restaurants - as you are on stage.

Downtown Las Vegas: If you’re a fan of cinema and pop culture, you’ll recognize many iconic symbols downtown, including the waving cowboy and The Horseshoe casino. Downtown offers more of the vintage Vegas experience, as much of the new development occurs along the strip.

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Besides the Sahara Hotel & Casino, the north end of the Las Vegas Strip used to be home to the El Rancho, Wet ‘n Wild and other properties that are now defunct. Many tourists and experts now wonder what will happen to that stretch of the strip and if it can ever rebound.

When looking north on Las Vegas Blvd., you see a mix of hotels like the Riviera, Circus Circus and the Hilton Vacation. There is also a lot of vacant land and the unfinished Fontainebleau.

This section of the Strip was once the place to be. The Rat Pack, Elvis, the Beatles were all performing within blocks of each other.

“That end of the Strip is starting to become less desirable visually,” said David Crouse, a visitor who is staying at Hilton Vacation.

Where the El Rancho Vegas once stood now sits dozens of acres of empty land. MGM Resorts owns 78 acres including Circus Circus which they’d planned to built a CityCenter-like property on. And at one point in 2007, the company valued it close to $20 million an acre. Now, it’s nowhere close to that and all plans have been halted.

“That’s a long time for those companies to sit on that land,” said Jacob Oberman, a gaming analyst for CB Richard Ellis.
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The new census numbers say Las Vegas is practically a ghost town.

When the housing bubble blew and the economy sank, thousands of Southern Nevadans pulled up stakes and abandoned their homes, leaving one in seven houses a vacant shell.

That’s what the numbers say, anyway.

But as is often the case with statistics, the numbers don’t tell the whole story, local demographers and housing experts say.

“There’s no doubt it’s ground zero in the foreclosure situation, but to imply that it’s a ghost town … that’s not true,” said Dennis Smith of Home Builders Research, a Las Vegas-based real estate research firm.

The numbers went public in February with the first major release of data collected during the 2010 census. Along with statistics on population and racial demographics, the census released what it calls occupancy data, which is a tally of total “housing units” and how many are vacant.

The numbers showed nearly 125,000 empty housing units in Clark County, which pushed the county’s vacancy rate to 14.9 percent and drove the statewide numbers to 14.3 percent, 11th worst in the nation.

States worse off than Nevada included Florida, Arizona, Vermont and Maine, the worst with a 22.8 percent vacancy rate.

The issue, local demographers say, is how the Census Bureau defines a housing unit. The definition includes just about everything, from single-family homes and apartments to weekly motels and time-share condominiums. It also includes empty homes that are for rent or for sale.

Jon Wardlaw, assistant planning manager for Clark County, said he believes the local vacancy numbers have been inflated with the proliferation of high-rise condo-hotels and vacation time shares that get counted as housing units but are not primary residences.

“Who lives in a time share? You can’t. So is it a hotel or something else?” said the demographer, whose own calculations put the county home vacancy rate at about 8 percent.
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Apparently Disney World is a riskier vacation spot than the Las Vegas Strip.

Las Vegas ranked No. 3 on a list of the 25 most dangerous U.S. spring break destinations, just below Orlando and Daytona Beach.

The analysis was put together by Avvo, a website that offers ratings and profiles for doctors and lawyers. The company evaluated the 25 cities based on data including violent crimes, murders, rapes and fatal car crashes.

Other cities in the top 10 include Myrtle Beach, S.C.; New Orleans; Panama City, Fla.; and Miami. Florida had 10 cities on the list.

Further down the list, Reno took the No. 23 spot.

The list comes during a week when many college students are beginning their travels to spring break destinations around the country. Since this past weekend, MTV has made the Palms the headquarters. for the network’s spring break debauchery.

Las Vegas ranked at No. 2 on Orbitz.com’s list of the most popular destinations for the 2011 spring break season. Orlando bumped the city from the top spot, which it had held for two years.

The travel booking website said Las Vegas room rates during spring break increased 15 percent compared to last year, from $88 in 2010 to $101 in 2011.

Ortbiz.com senior travel editor Jeanenne Tornatore said airfares to Las Vegas from March 1 to May 31 have also increased 15 percent compared to same period a year ago.

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Would you plunk down $30 to guarantee that a king-size bed would be waiting for you in Las Vegas?

Although mandatory resort fees have spread among many Las Vegas resorts during the recession, MGM Resorts International has quietly added several options in recent weeks. Besides the bed fee, which allows guests at Mandalay Bay their choice of a king or two queens, MGM now lists differing surcharges for differing check-out or check-in times at several properties and has extended the resort fee to the Bellagio for the first time.

But a $20 charge to guarantee a nonsmoking room at the MGM Grand was quickly snuffed out after it threatened to billow into a public relations fiasco.

“These options provide yet another tool for us to personalize the guest experience, according to each guest’s individual preferences,” MGM officials said in a statement. “We’re receiving some very positive feedback from guests.”

Not all of the MGM hotels have the new fees. The ones put into effect vary by property.

But some industry experts wonder whether that will lead the hotels down the same runway as the airline industry, which has become a lightning rod of consumer antipathy for charging extra for everything from checked baggage to food to seat assignments.

Some hotels around the country have listed extended time fees, said Bobby Bowers, senior vice president at Smith Travel Research. Such options largely disappeared during the tight economy.

However, Bowers added, “I don’t think I’ve seen a bed size fee before. It’s hard for me to fathom. I think there is definitely the danger of people feeling nickeled-and-dimed for everything they do.”

Despite the complaints directed at airlines over what management terms unbundling or a la carte pricing, the extra revenue has contributed to the industry’s best profits in years. Many airline executives go out of their way to highlight fee income in Wall Street presentations.

Starting in the current quarter, MGM told gaming industry analysts that it would create a separate line item in its financial reports to show the revenue that comes from the resort fees. That comes against a backdrop of Las Vegas room rates falling 22 percent since 2007, a source of concern to securities analysts, and only recently started to rebound.
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LAS VEGAS — A lot of people are planning trips to Dallas this weekend to enjoy the Super Bowl, and no doubt they will have to shell out some big bucks to do so. Others are booking trips to Las Vegas as the alternate destination and their savings can be dramatic.

The Las Vegas Convention and Visitor’s Association says the town is expecting 280,000 football fans this weekend.

“It is actually a phenomenal experience to celebrate Super Bowl in Las Vegas,” said Jeremy Handell with the LVCVA. “We always like to say ‘If you can’t be at the game itself, the next best place to be for viewing the game is here in Vegas.’”

Some hoping to tackle vacation deals reach out to travel agents like Doris Wells. She shows how much a Green Bay Packers fan can save by ditching Dallas and choosing Las Vegas. One package from Green Bay to Las Vegas, including airfare and a two night stay during Super Bowl weekend, would cost visitors just a little under $1,100. Packers fans who choose Dallas would shell out over $2,000 for their trip. If you add a really good Super Bowl ticket to that, the total price tag would come out to be about $11,500.

“There is really no comparison. There really is a lot of savings that people could do to experience the Super Bowl here. Of course, you’re not going to be sitting in the stadium but you will have big large screen with a lot of people having a good time,” said Wells.

If you have friends and family coming to town looking to party along the Strip this weekend, the advice is too book early, because the law of supply and demand works the same way any town you’re in.

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