Wednesday, February 8th the Southern Nevada SIOR Chapter luncheon featured the LVGEA (Las Vegas Global Economic Alliance). The presenters were Jonas Peterson, CEO and Jared Smith, COO.
The title of the presentation was “Winning the Jobs War”. It was a rather intense introduction when Jonas tied a recent Gallup poll – only 43% of employees in North American who were surveyed believed that they have a “good” job – to the statistic that US Unemployment is at 5%. By the way, “Good” in this survey was defined as 30 hrs/week plus receiving a consistent paycheck from an employer. Interesting! Just the same, only 11% of respondents in the survey said that they have a “great” job where they are engaged.
This intro positioned the rest of the presentation for the LVGEA scorecard of how Nevada was “Winning the Jobs War”. Again, many really interesting slides were presented. I chose to focus on where Nevada ranks #1. There is a lot we can be proud of.
• Nevada is a leader for corporate investments
• Nevada is a leader for small business investments
• Highest population increase
• Highest wage increase
• Lowest corporate travel costs (out of McCarren Airport)
• #1 in quality of life (this is an LVGEA survey conducted with employees that relocate to Southern Nevada from other states)
• #1 for job creation – Gallup
• One of the slides I particularly liked showed that there is $13.9 billion in new capital investment just in the top 10 projects in Southern Nevada.
Let me add this. The predecessor organization to LVGEA, led by Summer Hollingsworth was pretty impactful. It was then led by Tom Skancke for a transitionary period. If you’ve ever heard Tom speak, his view of the world gives you chills in an inspiring sort of way. Here we are, with Jonas Peterson at the helm, and the team he has assembled. My feeling after his presentation is that Jonas and his team are sincere with engaging the various stakeholders in economic development; they are not afraid to invest in value add initiatives; and ultimately this is a group to watch (and potentially support if that’s your shtick) going forward. I am a fan so far.
At the end of each SIOR meeting there is a round table discussion where the top office and industrial brokers weigh in on the latest trends, stats, cap rates, lease rates, everything. It is also a great opportunity to hear from lenders, contractors, architects, developers and title companies. Below is more information on my take-aways from the market round table. The SOCIETY OF INDUSTRIAL AND OFFICE REALTORS® SIOR is the leading professional office and industrial real estate association.
Office Market:
• Two large users in the 40,000 sf range are currently touring the market. Insurance industry
• For office landlords, getting your spaces ready to go is critical
• Proactive office landlords are winning the deals
• When looking at large space 45,000 sf and up, there are 3-5 viable options for users to look at. This is down from 8-10 options 18 months ago.
Industrial Marketing:
• There is 4 million sf of spec industrial projects under construction
• ½ of this space is spoken for another 1.5 million sf of users looking in the market
• There is another 3.5 million sf of development in the pipeline
• My favorite nugget came from a side conversation I had with an industrial developer. I asked him, “how much more energy is left in the market for these big users?” His reply, “I just closed on another 50 acres, and as of this morning, I have a handshake deal to buy one of the other spec projects.” He is petal to the metal in our community. Let’s hope his bet pays off!!
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