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Development group pushes tech to boost Southern Nevada economy

Technology today. Technology tomorrow.

Efforts to diversify Southern Nevada’s economy will continue to underscore technology, officials said Friday at a luncheon marking the Nevada Development Authority’s 46th anniversary.

By:
Matthew Crowley
Las Vegas Journal Review

This year, the group attracted 50 new businesses and helped 13 expand. The businesses brought 3,514 new jobs to the valley for an employee economic impact of $414 million.

Some newly attracted companies, such as Regent Systems (software engineering), Remarkable Hosting (Web hosting) and Compudigm Services (database and casino software) relate to the technology industries authority President Somer Hollingsworth considers so vital.

Hollingsworth said technology is happening here now, helped by the right infrastructure and circumstances.

"It wouldn’t be happening if we didn’t have the juice these companies need, the fiber in the ground," he said at Bellagio. "And things are probably happening faster now than they were two years ago because of all of the dead dot-coms."

California companies are starting to look elsewhere, he said, dejected by high living costs and high taxes. They could like Nevada’s lower-cost, tax-friendly climate, he said.

Nevada would become even more attractive for tech companies, Hollingsworth said, if the Legislature approved funding for a $75 million science and technology building proposed for the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. The building would be tangible proof of the city’s commitment to technology and a major selling point when recruiting major tech companies.

Hollingsworth said he’s already been in talks with such a brand-name company, one that would be willing to help finance, and name, the new technology building. He wouldn’t identify the company.

In written comments, university President Carol Harter stressed getting the building funded and started.

"Our ability to continue to recruit top-notch professors to teach our students and to conduct research — and to retain those excellent professors already on board — also hinges to a large degree on the near-term construction of this building," she wrote.

If the building were delayed until the 2005 Legislature, Harter wrote, university officials fear inflation would add another $3 million to the project’s costs.

Kenneth Ladd, the authority’s chairman, also stressed the need for the building and the university’s partnership in attracting new businesses. Other cities, he said, notably Atlanta and San Diego, have formed research alliances with their universities, building laboratories and supplying seed money to attract applied researchers, scientists whose work yields new inventions or industry.

"Once that applied research comes out of the research stage and goes into the production stage," Ladd said, "it creates a demand for a highly educated work force to fill those jobs."

Both Ladd and Hollingsworth said they plan to lobby Gov. Kenny Guinn to help get the building approved.

Keynote speaker Don Ohlmeyer, a former television executive with a long history in sports programming, said one way Las Vegas shouldn’t try to diversify is by spending public money to build stadiums for professional sports teams.

Although some civic officials have argued that Las Vegas would instantly have major-league cachet with a pro team, Ohlmeyer argued it doesn’t always work that way.

"Do people think more of Cincinnati because they have the Bengals (who so far have won just one game this National Football League season)?" he asked. "Do people think any less of Charlotte, (N.C.), because they don’t have the (National Basketball Association) Hornets anymore?"

A better way to upgrade civic image, and spend public money, Ohlmeyer argued, is to build strong fire departments and police forces, hospitals and schools.

"Getting a sports team won’t change your public image," he said. "But making UNLV one of the best universities in the country will."

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