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Las Vegas Glitz Dulled By Growing Pains

Posted by: Chris Steins
Thanks to: Chris Steins
29 April 2005 - 7:00am

As the city opens the world's most expensive casino, residents worry about lack of housing, bad traffic, smog, and crime.

After 17 years of "incessant construction, Mr. Wynn opens a new casino, once again the most expensive in the world, at $2.7 billion. Local officials embrace the mirror-skinned leviathan with its lake and golf course as a symbol that world demand for the city's ever-morphing formula of gambling, restaurants, and entertainment spectacles seems boundless.

...Many who live in America's fastest-growing city say the soaring billions in wealth generated by Vegas as an international destination for world travelers has not trickled far beyond casino floors. Likewise, many who study the effects of rapid growth - the city had just 5,100 residents the year before the state legalized gambling in 1931 - say the traffic congestion, smog, crime, and insufficient social services show little sign of improving."

Full Story: Las Vegas glitz dulled by growing pains
Source: The Christian Science Monitor, April 28, 2005
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Even if the report overestimates the costs by a factor of two and underestimates the tax-benefit by a similar amount, the conclusion would be pretty much the same: destination resorts cost local government and taxpayers money.
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