In mid-December, the City Center project in Las Vegas, Nev., will open to the public, but with tourism slumping and Nevada at the heart of the foreclosure crisis, can this multi-billion dollar revitalization of downtown Las Vegas help lead the city out of trouble or will it, too, fail?
Fox News goes on the job hunt, with some fast facts from the Fox News Brainroom.
Nevada and Las Vegas:
• Oct 2009: Las Vegas metro area unemployment was 13%, up from 7.8% a year earlier
• Nov 2009: Nevada's unemployment rate was 13% - second highest among the states
• Construction industry pays more than 30% of Las Vegas sales and use taxes
• The tourism industry in Las Vegas employs approximately 250,000
• Tourism in Las Vegas injects more than $30 billion itsl economy every year
Visitors and Conventions
• 2009: 27.5 million visited Las Vegas as of September, down -4.5% from the same time period last year
• 2008: 37.4 million people visited Las Vegas, down -4% from 2007
• 2007's 39.2 million visitors to Las Vegas was a record
• 2008: Las Vegas convention attendance was 5.89 million
• 2009: Las Vegas convention attendance was 3.56 million as of September, down -27% from the same time period last year
• 2008: More than 22,000 Conventions and Meetings were held in Las Vegas
• The 22,000 meetings and conventions annually in Las Vegas provide 46,000 jobs and $8.5 billion in economic activity
Foreclosures:
• Oct 2009: About 1 in every 80 Nevada properties received a forclosure filing
• Nevada continues to have the nation's highest state foreclosure rate
• Las Vegas has the nation's highest foreclosure rate among metropolitan areas with a population of at least 200,000
• Oct 2009: One in every 68 Las Vegas housing units received a foreclosure filing in October - more than five times the national average
• Fewer than 5,000 homes will be built in 2009, compared with more than 35,000 a year during the boom.
Las Vegas CityCenter:
• Las Vegas CityCenter is a 67-acre, six-tower complex that cost $8.5 billion
• Nearly 5,900 rooms will available in three hotels
• CityCenter is nearly 18 million square feet
Convention, Commerical Space in Las Vegas:
• Most of about new 40 projects in Las Vegas that have been proposed or started haven't determined completion dates
• Las Vegas now has the same amount of commercial space occupied as it did in 2006
• 2008: 209,644 square feet of convention space was added in Las Vegas
• 2009: additional 557,000 square feet of convention space was opened or under construction in Las Vegas
• The office market has 11.2 million square feet of empty space with a vacancy rate of nearly 23% [That equates to about five years of inventory]
• The industrial real estate market is hurting too, with 13 million square feet of vacant industrial space, which is about two years of inventory.
• The retail sector has 5.1 million square feet of vacant space, a supply of about two years
• Sept 2009: 19 commercial building permits were issued with a value of $10 million [Between Sept 2007 and Sept 2008 the value of commercial permits averaged $130 million per month]
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