The Local Newsroom
Medicine
In Las Vegas, You Never Grow Old
December 13th, 2012
Greater Las Vegas has bought its first property on the game board of medical tourism: Vanity Street. The Southern Nevada Medical Industry Coalition—the main player in boosting the Valley’s reputation as a medical-tourism destination—has forged a strategic alliance with the American Academy of Anti-Aging Medicine, which holds its world congress at the Sands Convention Center from Dec. 12-15. Read more »
Transportation
Cabbie Crackdown
December 12th, 2012
Valley taxi companies took an estimated 27 million trips last year, and Taxicab Authority administrator Charles Harvey realizes that he can’t eliminate long hauling. But he is using a variety of more aggressive methods to fight it, including posing as a passenger himself as part of undercover operations and recently implementing a bike patrol so investigators can monitor areas they couldn’t previously. Read more »
Green Felt Journal
The Year of Hope and Holding Steady
December 6th, 2012
The people who run Las Vegas casinos were expecting a lot in 2012: a return to prosperity on the Strip, a revival downtown and a federal framework for online poker. They didn’t get everything they wanted, but at the end of the year, they’re still in the game, which might be a victory in and of itself. Read more »
Seven Questions
Kunzer-Murphy: New Stadium Bowl's Biggest Need
The Maaco Bowl Las Vegas’ former director on resigning her post, the downside of a college football playoff system and the challenges of working in a man’s world
December 6th, 2012
Few people have experienced the breadth of college athletics like Tina Kunzer-Murphy. The Las Vegas native and Valley High School alum played tennis and volleyball at UNLV, coached the university’s women’s tennis team, directed its cheerleading program and worked in administrative capacities within the athletic program, including the Rebel Football Foundation and the Women’s Sports Foundation. In 1999, she was hired to run ESPN’s regional office at UNLV, and the following year was named executive director of the Las Vegas Bowl, only the second woman in the nation to fill such a post. Read more »
River of Hope
December 6th, 2012
Las Vegans who bristle at the occasional outsider’s suggestion that the city is doomed to die of thirst now have at their disposal a smart new rebuttal in the form of an international water agreement. Next time a Northeasterner makes you feel like a squatter in a condemned building, whip this out: Minute 319, the Interim International Cooperative Measures in the Colorado River Basin. Read more »
Character Study
Librarian With a Future
December 6th, 2012
“We have an outstanding library system here,” says Tim McDonald—he speaks in hushed tones; eight years working in a library will do that to a person—“it’s a place to really enrich your life in a lot of ways.” Read more »
Downtown
Rebuilding Bridger
December 6th, 2012
Longtime Las Vegans may remember paying (or disputing) parking tickets at the now-abandoned Bridger Building, one of a handful of high-rises downtown with marble tile and turquoise-blue façades. It may not seem like much of a monument—someone on SkyScraper.org even called it a “shameful monstrosity”—but to a band of influential locals on a recent Friday evening, it became a symbol of the city’s potential for sustainable preservation. Read more »
About Town
Merry Christmas: Fremont East Is Done
Now on to the real business of building downtown
November 29th, 2012
Downtown is bigger than the Arts District, bigger than Fremont East—and we need to keep that in mind as we celebrate every new gallery and every new bar that opens in those neighborhoods. We’re trying to build a city center here—a real one, not a city-themed casino and retail complex. Read more »
The Deal
47 Under $40
November 29th, 2012
Who says room rates are going up? Lots of surveys I’ve seen lately do, but I’ve got evidence to the contrary. Every year at this time we conduct our own rate survey at LasVegasAdvisor.com. It’s a serious study that encompasses every hotel-casino in town (95 this year), and we check lots of sources. Read more »
Hunger
Making the (Food) Desert Bloom
November 22nd, 2012
Some of the best minds in the food business gathered recently at the Springs Preserve to discuss a problem most citizens don’t even know we have: food security. It was the first step in the formation of the Vegas Valley Community Food Council. Read more »
