The new, funky, exciting architecture doesn't evoke Detroit - it barely looks like Vegas.
Since visiting for the first time in the mid-1980's until my most recent visit, there have been a few noticeable changes in the make-up of Las Vegas. The city has undergone an amazing population boom - from just under 200,000 to almost 600,000 in the city proper, and in the greater Las Vegas area itself from a little over 700,000 to approximately 2 million. Growth like that resulted, of course, in a construction boom. Billions were spent tearing down old hotels (The Sands, Desert Inn, Stardust, Vegas World, Sahara, Boardwalk - all hotels/casinos I'd visited that are all now gone) and new places being built (Mandalay Bay, Excalibur, New York, New York, MGM Grand, Paris, Venetian, Palazzo, Bellagio, Wynn & Encore Wynn, Luxor, Treasure Island, Aria, Rio, Monte Carlo, Hard Rock, Casino Royale, Stratosphere, Mirage, Cosmopolitan - all hotels/casinos that have been built since my first visit to Vegas).
Naturally, all that construction of huge, multi-thousand room hotels with sprawling casino floors has had serious repercussions for the small places that dotted the Vegas landscape for decades. Most of the new construction has been on the west end of the strip, in the unincorporated town of Paradise. the only new large hotel/casino constructed in Las Vegas proper in the past twenty years was the Stratosphere. The flashier hotel/casinos on Fremont Street, the heart of downtown Las Vegas, were saved with the creation of the Fremont Street Experience in the early '90's. An attempt was made to expand on Fremont Street another three blocks east, but it hasn't really taken off.
Worse yet, all the huge hotel/casinos put a serious crimp on the ability of the smaller motels along Fremont, Ogden and Carson to compete, not just in terms of amenities, but also price. If a person can get a room at a new(ish) modern place in the heart of the action for less than $40.00 a night, why the heck would anybody
stay in an antiquated & pretty much dilapidated place in a rather dodgy area that is at least 35 years past it's prime?
So those places tried to adapt by becoming residence motels. However, with all the homes being built during the construction boom (At one point, 57 new homes a day were being built in the area), and coupled with the nefarious/duplicitous efforts of the mortgage industry to qualify people for loans they couldn't afford to get them into those homes, the transition to residence hotels was a band-aid effort at best.
Less than a couple blocks from the Fremont Street Experience, the decay starts to show
The small motel has become a dinosaur in Las Vegas, the Brontosaurus in the living room. City officials play up the continued growth along the strip, but nary a mention is made of all the derelict buildings that line the commercial district east of Las Vegas Blvd in the city of Las Vegas. It's there though, and unless the city finds a way to re-invent the area, make the area viable and able to compete with the strip, it will only continue to crumble.
Driving down Ogden to North Bruce Ave, then back up Fremont to 7th, then down Carson to South Bruce Ave, the number of boarded up motels with large for sale signs, or worse, condemned building notices and large chain link fences surrounding them, was staggering.
Not-so-great bargains are to be had for the not-so-shrewd real estate investor
Fremont Street used to be the Las Vegas street. It was the street featured in countless movies and TV shows as representative of all that glitters in Las Vegas (Hence it's nickname, Glitter Gulch). That has changed to the point that most visitors to the Las Vegas area never even see the hotels and casinos that started it all unless they are taking the bus tour or are visiting the Law Enforcement/Mob Museum ($18.00 admission for adults, btw).
Two more wonderful investment opportunities along Fremont
The boarded up motels and other derelict small commercial buildings are as much a victim of the financial crises as they are a victim of a lack of foresight on the part of the city of Las Vegas and the owners of the properties. There is no doubt that these people hold on to the dream that a change for the better is just around the corner, or that things will get better if only...if only some miracle or another were to occur.
Facing up to the truth of the situation, that the center of the "Entertainment Capital of the World," has moved 5 miles to the west, is not a reality that anyone in the area seems to be able to embrace.
The moniker "Detroit of the Desert" is not reserved solely for the commercial areas surrounding East Fremont street. Just a few blocks north on Las Vegas Blvd down from the Fremont Street Experience, a few blocks or so from the Natural History Museum, is the city of North Las Vegas. That is where you will see economic devastation of Detroit proportions.
North Las Vegas is the center of the foreclosure crisis in Southern Nevada. It is not possible to drive down a street that is not dotted with boarded up, foreclosed and abandoned homes. The only other area of the country where I have personally witnessed this level of economic miasma is Detroit, so it's not without cause that I apply that comparison.
A foreclosed home recently vacated, the previous occupants left a lot behind...
There are those in the media (and in the various tourism departments of major cities - and by "tourism departments" I mean PR departments...) that claim things are looking up, that the economy is starting to rebound. That may be true in areas of the country that have a broad economic base, but in Las Vegas, where the economy is based upon a service industry and only a service industry, when people started watching their pennies and decided to stop indulging every whim and desire via credit, the financial crises that gripped the country in 2007 still has a seemingly unshakable hold.
North Las Vegas, the entire city, is headed for receivership. The state of Nevada will probably have to step in and take over, as the city leaders have failed to an incredible degree. North Las Vegas has a little over 200,000 citizens and the highest property tax rates in Clark County, as well as a sales tax rate that is a full point higher than the national average.
Yet the city has a deficit approaching 9 million dollars.
They do have a nice, new (and expensive) city hall though. It's right on Las Vegas Blvd, surrounded by boarded up strip malls.
Side by side foreclosed homes in the area west of I-15 known as the Meadows
North Las Vegas may be the poster child for short-sighted financial management and the center of the foreclosure crisis in the Las Vegas Valley, but it's far from being alone. West of I-15, in areas of relatively new construction, there are foreclosures and the resultant abandoned homes on every street in every neighborhood. Some streets have foreclosed homes in rows, sun-parched lawns dead or dying, legal notices posted to front doors.
Housing developments less than 6 years old are littered with foreclosed homes
Most of these homes were sold for upwards of $300,000 a scant 6 years ago. Today you would be hard pressed to realise even a third of that in a sale, providing you could actually find someone to want to make a purchase.
This paperwork can be seen taped to doors all over the Las Vegas Valley
For 62 straight months Las Vegas lead the nation in Foreclosures. It has lost that crown - now it is number 8, behind a slew of California communities. But that is primarily due to the supply of underwater homes in Vegas drying up, not because the economy in Vegas has strengthened.
In 2010 a gallery in Las Vegas featured a video presentation with every foreclosure in Las Vegas given 1 second of film in a snapshot. The video took just under 22 hours to view. That's almost 80,000 foreclosed homes.
In August of 2009, almost 18,000 homes were foreclosed on in Las Vegas. That's over 480 a day, every day. And the good news was, that rate was down 11% from the month of July.
As some foreclosed homes were being vandalized, For Sale signs are discouraged
The situation, while a little better in terms of raw numbers from 2009, has not really improved, as there are literally tens of thousands of vacant homes throughout the Las Vegas Valley. It has been estimated that up to 20 years worth of real estate inventory is sitting empty, and not appreciating. These properties are weathering, and will need repairs and upgrades to be salable.
This sign for a suburban development was posted sometime prior to 2006
Construction on a number of planned developments was halted when the recession hit in 2007. The sign above was never removed from the suburb that never came to be. The homes were to be sold "from the low $200's".
This sign for a suburban development was posted sometime in 2012
Amazingly enough, banks have made funds available to get new home construction going again. Supposedly, 300 new homes a month are being constructed in the Las Vegas area. Now though, the developers have to throw in a few amenities, and the home prices have dropped dramatically. The signs advertise the same square footage, but 6 years later the prices are almost $100,000 less. Real Estate is not supposed to work like that.
The foreclosures aren't limited to the suburban sprawl. This home is just off the strip.
With foreclosures and the concurrent abandonment of homes in areas all over Las Vegas making for cheap prices on bank-owned properties, where are the costumers for these new homes coming from?
The crisis is far from over. This notice was posted July 7th of 2012
The foreclosures rate may have slowed, but it has hardly abated. How can new construction be justified when homes are being plastered with these notices every day? Is new home construction being done to create the illusion of economic growth?
Entire apartment complexes have been foreclosed upon in Las Vegas
Single family homes are not the only residential properties being foreclosed on in Las Vegas. In late 2011, the bane of the Las Vegas Police Department, city officials, and even the people who lived there - Buena Vista Springs - was finally forced into foreclosure. Of the 288 units, only 42 were occupied. The rest were boarded up and segregated from the others by a chain link fence.
The Buena Vista Springs complex is along MLK jr. Blvd. It was foreclosed last year
The plan the city has is a simple one. Find the remaining residents someplace else to live, and then somehow, miraculously, find nearly 7 million dollars to bulldoze the place - and then find somebody to build something better there.
Las Vegas plans to spend nearly seven million dollars eliminating the eyesore.
The city officials are going to need all the luck Las Vegas has in reserve to pull that off. They relocated 1,000 residents in 2007 when HUD officials pulled low-income renter subsidies due to the high crime rate and unsafe as well as unsanitary conditions. The complex has been sitting partially fenced off and practically vacant since.
How very Detroit.
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