What Atlanta can learn from Vegas
Atlanta can learn from Las Vegas.
Vegas is a city that makes a huge portion of its income from two industries. First is tourism and the convention trade. Second is the high tech industry that Nevada’s business environment draws.
Atlanta and Las Vegas are very similar. Both need the convention trade. Both want high tech jobs. Both use their playground reputation as a way to attract conventioneers.
Las Vegas, however, has an advantage: it’s not ashamed of its sinful more adult side. It revels in it. Atlanta is torn. On the one hand, it tries to keep an image of gentility. On the other, it knows that without the adult industry, it will be quickly blown away by Charlotte and Chattanooga.
The truth is that the laws in Las Vegas aren’t that different from what is legal in Atlanta. If Atlanta zoned carefully, added the right law enforcement coverage, and guaranteed that billing practices were cleaned up, the sex industry could be more above board, safer, and more attractive to conventioneers that it now is.
Atlanta should also consider adding card rooms and sports books. I am not arguing that we need full blown casinos (though, I’m not opposed to that either), but poker rooms and sports books in which people could bet on college football games would assure that programs on which Georgia citizens count could easily continue.
Again, good regulation is needed and fraud prevention is essential, but other states have seen this kind of betting help their economies.
Atlanta can also learn one other practical lesson from Las Vegas in public transit. CAT provides riders a $5 transcard that lets them ride for 24 hours. MARTA could easily adopt such a program.
What Can Las Vegas learn from us? People get really mad when you have a train system and it does not run!
October 30th, 2004 at 2:40 am
Believe me when I say this, but the last thing Atlanta’s image needs is casinos.
November 4th, 2004 at 10:35 pm
More relevant to this post, but the McDonalds, Waffle House and Churchs Chicken at the Lindbergh Plaza have been shut down. K-Mart, Big Lots and Office Depot have already been shut down, so it looks like a bulldozer should be coming soon.