Latest Vision for Las Vegas - A Downtown Vibe | Hacker News Reader

Latest Vision for Las Vegas - A Downtown Vibe

nytimes.com

52 pointspg32 comments

I am in Vegas right now, and I can tell you: most nerds I know would die in this heat. Turn your oven on and stick your head into it: that's what it feels like.

I remember when I first visited San Francisco: I felt like it was home. Right then I decided that I'd move there some day. But Vegas doesn't feel that way. The entire city seems like a mirage: from the fake Eiffel Tower to the fake Statue of Liberty, it all seems so superficial. For the locals' sake I hope Hsieh can pull it off, but I'm skeptical.

All that fakery is the strip - the strip is for tourists, not locals.

True dat

Like discardorama, I am in Vegas right now. Possibly unlike discardorama, I was born and raised in this town.

Note: I don't live here now. I left in 1986 to go to work at Convex in Dallas, and now live in Austin. (after a 7 year break from the VC-funded madness when I lived in Hawaii 2004-2011.)

But while here, I'm working outside all day, every day. (Effecting a repossession of some heavy equipment for my father, and fixing said equipment so it can be transported. Said equipment is the remaining artifacts of what was a 50 year-old water well drilling business located in Las Vegas.)

Yes, in the 115F heat, and I'm 51, and have survived both an ascending aortic dissection and an associated MI.

It hasn't killed me yet.

The problem with Las Vegas isn't the heat. The problems are: lack of tech structure (why I left), and water. There simply will not be enough water to support a city of any size here.

Fun picture taken tonight downtown on Freemont East during First Friday: http://cl.ly/image/2U3m2I0p2O0v

I've come to realize Vegas is facing a problem with talent in tech. Plenty of companies are looking to hire, but there is not much selection. I guess that makes it a great place to move. Low cost of living and a sellers market.

Just be prepared for low rates. You can't demand what you can on the coasts. Low cost of living means low salaries. Companies are often willing to expense living and travel, though.

If it's a choice between low cost of living/low salary and high cost of living/high salary do you happen to have any figures which show which one actually works out as more profitable?

Normally depends on what you need to live. Family needing family house go low cost. Recent grad, share a place in high cost high salary area. It's a spectrum and particular jobs may override the general but it is a start.

Good point, I never thought of it like that.

My thinking is that a good job with pay appropriate to the area is better in a high-cost area than in a low-cost area. The reason being is that part of your pay goes towards housing which eventually means a mortgage.

Once you decide to retire you can cash out that mortgage. A modest house in the bay area is still a million dollar house. A modest house in vegas is a $200K house. $1M in hand gives you a lot more flexibility than $200K.

Also, an iPod or other globally-priced goods are cheap in high-cost high-wage areas, expensive in low-cost low-wage areas. Student loans, etc. are like iPods.

I think the ideal is to work in a high-wage high-cost area early on your career, to build up a high salary history and cover some of your fixed costs (student loans, etc.), while not incurring large recurring high costs (buying a house). Then, relocate to a low-cost low-wage area while working remotely for a high percentage of your original salary.

A $150k/yr Silicon Valley salary that became $110k/yr to telecommute from a low-cost, low-tax, low-wage area would be awesome buying power.

A lot of people do this with fixed retirement income (pensions, or even social security) -- retire to a low cost area.

It's obviously case by case. Some cities have better bang for your buck. Here's one report from Forbes.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/joelkotkin/2012/07/09/the-cities...

Also really depends on what you want. Cheap house or great nightlife? Great schools or rock climbing?

What're the best sites to find companies hiring in the Las Vegas area?

http://hirevegastech.com/

Seems like they've tried this before with City Center--though it might not be a gigantic construction job--but it seems to want to ignore the fundamental culture of Las Vegas. Vegas is a unique city and even the people who live there aren't there because they want a regular city (think about the type of person to become a doctor or teacher in a town like that). Freemont is already Vegas' "downtown"; that it doesn't look like other cities' downtowns is not a problem.

CityCenter heavily contrasted with Hsieh's plan in the text of the article.

There are some great Photoshopped photos showing how much more fun the Las Vegas strip would be with narrower, pedestrian-friendly streets:

http://narrowstreetsla.blogspot.com/2011/07/las-vegas-strip-... http://narrowstreetsla.blogspot.com/2011/07/las-vegas-strip-...

This seems really cool, but what about Vegas' sustainability issues? Isn't everything still imported( especially water ), or does this project also address that?

I've always wondered that and haven't seen many address it. Given that the Colorado is running really low due to demands on it's water I can't help but wonder if creating a dense downtown in Vegas isn't the wrong direction to go from a sustainability point of view. (I'm not saying suburban sprawl is better, just saying that perhaps a resort city in the desert should just stay focused on a single industry) I wonder how the people involved reconcile the environmental impact of Vegas with growing it more.

They're dealing with it in the same way the Baby Boomers dealt with unsustainable economic growth: go into debt and pass a law to make it future generations' problem!

A stopgap solution is currently in progress: since Lake Mead levels are dropping to the point where they threaten to fall below the level of Las Vegas's current intake pipes, a third pipe originating at a much lower level is being constructed (cost: about $800m).

There are of course obvious reasons that moving your intake further down on a shrinking lake is not precisely a solution to the problem...

FWIW, SoCal imports vastly more water than Vegas does. Practically all the agriculture in SoCal would disappear without the imported water.

The city of Los Angeles has 6 times more people than Vegas, without counting the metro area, the OC and San Diego, and of course the agriculture. It would be shocking if LV took as much water as SoCal.

While true, and quite obvious, I don't understand your point. Are you saying that makes SoCal water importation more sustainable?

In answer to all the below talking about Lake Mead and the Colorado river, note that much (perhaps most) of the water supply in Las Vegas is groundwater (think: large municipal wells), and the water level in these is dropping as well.

There is some significant subsidence in the Northeast section of town.

I was invited by the Downtown Project to visit the city next month for one of their retreats. Will be sure to write a blog post afterwards.

Previously, some criticism about the Downtown Project: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5895699

What a schlep!

EDIT: Context http://www.paulgraham.com/schlep.html

So great to see entrepreneurs like Hsieh help to build communities on a massive scale.

Imagine if YC moved there.

If I got to pick between YC in MV and YC in LV, I'd pick LV hands-down (firearms, other regulations, being able to have decent housing; taxes are better but that's a very minor concern). But, I don't think this would be true for more than maybe 5% of the people in YC.

The main weakness of YC in LV would be the lack of investors. Within 10 miles of YC in MV are almost all the good investors, within 30 miles, basically everyone except USV and Mark Suster and maybe a couple more.

Tony Hsieh is awesome, but he's basically the only investor of note in Las Vegas. Even Seattle has slightly more choices.

The Greenspun family could be an interesting source. Danny Greenspun, in particular, seems to get it.

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