EDGE meets with economic development leaders in Las Vegas

In July, EDGE traveled to Las Vegas to meet with three economic development organizations as part of an “EDGE Exchange,” a series of peer visits with organizations in comparable metros across the country.

Learning from our peers
Economic development organizations rarely have structured opportunities to compare how they operate. Most interaction happens at conferences or in short sessions – and usually in a competitive context. That leaves limited room for the kind of detailed conversation that produces useful information.

Our EDGE Exchanges are designed to fill that gap. Each visit is a working session with peer organizations in markets facing challenges similar to ours: workforce development, business attraction, small business support, and infrastructure investment. We share how EDGE operates, ask how they operate, and identify practices worth adopting or adapting here.

The value is practical. Testing a new program is expensive and slow, but learning firsthand how a peer organization already operates is impactful.

Three organizations, two days, countless insights
EDGE met with the Las Vegas Global Economic Alliance (LVGEA), the regional economic development organization for Southern Nevada; the Las Vegas Chamber, including the team behind its new Small Business Resource Center; and the City of Las Vegas economic and community development staff leading the city’s urban core strategy.

1. Workforce. Workforce was the primary concern in all three meetings. Shifting expectations around remote work, gaps in the talent pipeline, and difficulty forecasting which skills employers will need are affecting how each organization approaches business attraction and retention. These are the same conditions we are managing in Memphis.
2. Competitiveness versus incentives. LVGEA emphasized moving the conversation away from incentive-driven attraction and toward overall competitiveness: infrastructure, talent availability, and quality of life. Incentives help close projects, but they do not create the conditions that generate them. This is consistent with how EDGE evaluates projects.
3. Regional perception. All three organizations described working to broaden how their region is understood beyond what it is best known for. LVGEA is actively communicating growth in aerospace, defense, advanced manufacturing, and technology in Southern Nevada. Their most effective tools have been consistent success story communication and familiarization tours that bring decision-makers into the region. Memphis faces a comparable positioning challenge.
4. Small business service delivery. The Las Vegas Chamber’s Small Business Resource Center is located in City Plaza, directly across from City Hall, with the Secretary of State’s office in the same building and Workforce Connections upstairs. Staff from the state’s business hub are embedded on the Chamber floor. The co-location allows a business owner to address multiple needs in a single visit, and it is certainly a model worth examining as EDGE continues to build out small business support.
5. Urban core redevelopment. The City of Las Vegas maintains an active downtown redevelopment strategy that includes regular developer roundtables and targeted public investment, including parking. Healthcare, technology and fintech, and sports and entertainment are their fastest-growing sectors.
6. Stakeholder communications. Each organization invests in regular newsletters, investor updates, and stakeholder engagement. The City coordinates district-level communications with council members and operates its own television station. The Chamber’s small business newsletter distributes information on grants, member activity, and ecosystem events.

Why this matters
These exchanges are becoming a signature part of how EDGE works. Memphis has a great deal to teach. We have proven models in small business lending, port and industrial asset management, and community-led planning that other regions want to understand.

We also have a great deal to learn. Every conversation gives us a clearer read on where Memphis stands among peer metros, a set of tested ideas we did not have to build from scratch, and a growing national network of practitioners willing to share openly. That network is an asset for this region, and we intend to keep building it.

That is what powering progress through partnerships looks like, whether the partner is down the street or across the country.