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NO GLAMOUR REQUIREDYusho is about the simplicity of Japanese street food. The essential fl avors of seasonal meats, fi sh and vegetables are intensifi ed over a fi ery grill.

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The door is open. The grill is hot!For menu or reservations, visit yusholv.com

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2016 | THE LATEST“Designing a Rebel Roof,” by Stacy J. Willis.From Hollywood to UNLV, a revolutionary shelter takes shape.Plus, why Nevada remains a promised land for the alternative-energy sector and seven apps for energy savers.

18 | Dispatch“Landscaping to Last,” by Nora Burba Trulsson.What LEED is to green architecture, SITES is to sustainable outdoor design. Will it find a foothold in thirsty Southern Nevada?

20 | THE ECO ISSUE“Get Out of the Damn Shower!” by Phil Hagen, Jessica Kantor and Greg Blake Miller.With drought seemingly the new norm for the Southwest, here are six suggestions for a water-secure future.Plus, new SNWA chief John Entsminger settles in, and artist Robert Beckmann explores Lake Mead’s crisis.

29 | NIGHTLIFE“Welcome to Miami,” by Melinda Sheckells.For a handful of Las Vegas expatriates, the road to the Southeast is paved with gold.Plus, Seven Nights and a Q&A with Jason Lema.

53 | DININGAl Mancini on Hiromaru Fusion Ramen. Plus, how one teacher is shaping Las Vegas’ next generation of chefs and Dishing With Grace.

59 | A&E“Whiz! Bang! Buzzkill!” by Jason Scavone.Fifty years later, looking back on the man who fought the mob and the comic book industry—and won both battles.Plus, CD Reviews, Tour Buzz, The Hit List and celebrating rock’s last pirate—Motörhead’s Lemmy Kilmister.

64 | Music“Rock Steady,” by Jarret Keene.Hard Rock entertainment VP Chas Smith on how to keep a c lassic music venue relevant.

65 | Showstopper“Classy Aussie,” by Steve Bornfeld.Olivia Newton-John brings elegance and a catalog of hits to the Flamingo.

78 | Seven QuestionsEconomic analyst Jeremy Aguero on the Valley’s continued recovery, the drought’s impact on future growth and the pros (and cons) of skyrocketing home prices.

ON THE COVER

Photo illustration by Ryan Olbrysh

DEPARTMENTS

11 | Dialogue

12 | Moment

14 | Event

17 | Seven Days

66 | Movies

INFLUENCE

PEDDLING

A new tech startup aims to connect amateur social-media stars with big brands. Read about the concept, along with the Downtown Project’s new app, in this week’s Bytes column, at VegasSeven.com/Bytes.

UNDERAGE

BASH

Can an 18-plus nightlife-event series succeed on the Strip? The Palazzo’s Dal Toro Ristorante is hoping the answer is yes. Get the details on the weekly party Club Fresh at DailyFiasco.com/Fresh.

FOLLOW US! Facebook.com/VegasSeven Twitter.com/7Vegas

DIALOGUE

CONTRIBUTORS

Robert Beckmann“Where’s the Bottom?” Page 26

➜ when the renowned

Henderson-based artist Robert

Beckmann told us he was deeply

concerned about the Valley’s water

supply, it didn’t take us long to

ask him to put his thoughts down

in paint. Beckmann—a trustee of

the Desert Wetlands Conservancy

whose work has always shown a

keen awareness of the fragility

of the environment—grew up in Swarthmore, Pennsylvania, studied at

the University of Iowa and moved to Southern Nevada in 1977. In the early

1990s, he gained international recognition for “Body of a House,” his classic

meditation on the wrath of nuclear weapons.

A recipient of the Governor’s Award for Excellence in the Arts, the Western

States Art Foundation Fellowship and the Art Institute of Chicago’s Laura

Slobe Prize, Beckmann has exhibited his fne art across the nation from New

York to Miami, and abroad in Canada, Japan, Finland, Estonia and Russia.

Las Vegans are the lucky ones, though: His murals can be seen at McCarran

International Airport, the Howard Hughes Center, on Henderson’s Water

Street and in many hotels. Beckmann recently completed six large murals

for the U.S. Botanic Garden in Washington, D.C.—a prestigious commission

from the Architect of the Capital.

Read our 2012 interview with Beckmann at VegasSeven.com/Beckmann.

THIS WEEK @ VEGASSEVEN.COMSKATING

AMBASSADORS

Push Forward, a skateboarding-focused nonprofit expanding Downtown, combines shredding with art instruction and martial arts phi-losophy. Learn how it’s changing kids’ lives—and skateboard-ing’s image—at DTLV.com/PushForward.

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Have you taken a photo that captures

the spirit of Las Vegas this week?

Share it with us at VegasSeven.com/Moment.

A Galaxy AblazePhoto by Aaron Mayes

While Tonopah trumpets its clear, dark skies to tourists (“More stars than you could ever imagine,” one website touts), drive an hour deeper into the central Nevada night and you’ll glimpse stars unseen by most who call this state home. Here, UNLV graduate stu-dent Fabian Hardy tries his best to capture images of the Milky Way as seen over the White Mountains from an area called The Sump, 250 miles northwest of Las Vegas. Hardy and other UNLV geoscience students recently undertook an expedition to the unique badlands on the hunt for a 12 million-year-old elephant skull. Read their story, and view the full slideshow, at VegasSeven.com/TheSump.

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40 YEARS OF UNLVinoFrom its humble beginnings in a liquor warehouse

to its emergence as a Las Vegas extravaganza,

UNLVino has been a Valley staple for four decades.

This year’s 40th anniversary celebration was

a four-day affair, kicking off April 9 when chef

Wolfgang Puck was honored at the Sip & Savor

event in his Spago restaurant. The next night

featured the second BAR-B-Q, followed April

11 by the Champagne-centric Bubble-Licious,

where artist Romero Britto was acknowledged

for his contributions to the UNLV campus. The

long weekend of imbibing for a cause wrapped

up with, the Grand Tasting at the Cleveland Clinic

Lou Ruvo Center for Brain Health. As is the case

each year, proceeds from all the festivities benefit

scholarship programs for UNLV’s William F. Harrah

College of Hotel Administration.

UPCOMING EVENTS • April 25 Help of Southern Nevada’s Passport to Paradise (HelpSoNV.org.) • April 26 Keep Memory Alive’s Power of Love Gala (KeepMemoryAlive.org.)

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FOR CABANA RESERVATIONS PLEASE CALL 702.719.5170

Public access subject to availability. Downtown Grand Las Vegas reserves all rights.

An eclectic blend of food, fun & entertainment!

Come for the SUN. Stay for the PARTY!

POOL OPEN DAILY • 9AM TO 7PM

DOWNTOWNGRAND.COM | 702.719.5100 206 N. 3RD STREET, LAS VEGAS, NV 89101

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Landscaping to LastWhat LEED is to green architecture, SITES is to

sustainable outdoor design. Will it fnd a foothold

in thirsty Southern Nevada?

By Nora Burba Trulsson

DISPATCH

ON A COOL SPRING MORNING, landscape architect Chris Brown walks through George “Doc” Cavalliere Park in Scotts-dale, Arizona, pointing out sustainable features of the 34-acre park. Native plantings dot the park, and several an-cient mesquite trees were incorporated into its design. All around are main-tenance-free materials: gabion walls for stormwater-retention basins, lines sandblasted on the basketball court so they don’t need to be repainted, arti-fcial turf–made of old plastic bags. The sun-shelter’s roof harvests rainwater and is adorned with solar panels. The park, Brown says, is net zero—meaning it produces as much energy as it uses.

Brown is the principal of Floor Associates, the Phoenix frm that designed the park; he’s also a fellow of the American Society of Landscape Architects. The park has won several regional design awards, but for Brown the main point of pride is that the park is one of just 30 pilot projects in the U.S. to be certifed by the Sustainable Sites Initiative, known as SITES. It was the frst-ever batch of certifcations for the recently launched program,

which recognizes landscape designs for their sustainable planning, design, construction and maintenance.

While there were no Nevada landscapes among the pilot projects, Las Vegas landscape professionals believe it won’t be long before projects statewide begin seeking SITES certifcation. “We push for sustainability in all our landscape projects,” says Las Vegas landscape architect Brad Theurer, president of the ASLA’s Nevada chapter. “No doubt, there are projects out there now in Nevada that could be SITES certifed.”

Exactly what is SITES, and how does it work?

In a nutshell, it is the landscape-only equivalent to the U.S. Green Building Council’s widely accepted LEED (Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design) rating system, which focuses more on buildings, rating them for a wide array of strategies, such as the use of recycled-content materials, low-water-use plumbing fxtures and the building’s proximity to a transit corridor.

“There was a need for a stand-alone,

sustainable rating system for projects without buildings, such as parks, or projects where only the landscape is being renovated,” SITES program director Danielle Pieranunzi says. “We developed SITES as a complement and a supplement to LEED.”

The SITES program had its origins in the mid-2000s, when the national ASLA began working on sustainable design and development issues, as did the Lady Bird Johnson Wildfower Center at the University of Texas at Austin. The two groups joined forces in 2005 and, a year later, were joined by the U.S. Botanic Garden in Wash-ington, D.C., to develop sustainable benchmarks for landscapes.

By 2009, SITES launched its pilot program, putting out a call in the United States and internationally for projects. About 350 were submitted, and the number was narrowed to 162; to date, just 30 have earned accreditation. Besides, Brown’s Scottsdale park, certifed projects include a single-family home in Pennsylvania, the renovation of the landscape at the Albuquerque

federal courthouse, and the 105-acre Mesa Verde Visitor and Research Center in Colorado. The rating system awards one to four stars to the projects. The Scottsdale Park received an impressive three stars; so far, only one project—Phipps’ Center for Sustainable Landscapes, an arboretum in Pittsburgh—has received four. (That 3-acre site was once a paved-over maintenance yard and brownfeld. Now it’s an educational facility that boasts net zero on both energy and water usage.) Next up, SITES plans to start not only certifying projects but accrediting specially qualifed landscape professionals, similar to the LEED program’s certifcation of architects.

Nevada’s landscape pros are ready to embrace SITES, Theurer says.

“We’ve been designing sustainably here for more than 20 years,” he says. “We have to, because we don’t have the luxury of water here. We’ve learned to create beautiful landscapes with our limited resources. In a way, we’ve been doing our own pilot program for SITES.”

Scottsdale’s George “Doc” Cavalliere Park (top) and

Phipps’ Center for Sustainable Landscapes in Pittsburgh.

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➜ are we ready to shift our com- munity crisis mode from “underwater” to “out-of-water”? Doesn’t feel like it. That’s despite the fact that our main water source, Lake Mead, is heading for another record low by this time next year (1,075 feet), when regional ration-ing begins. Despite this being the 14th year of drought on the Colorado River Basin, with the possibility that it’s less a drought than our region’s new norm. Despite the troubles in California, where they’re working to cut water use by 20 percent, because they have to.

Meanwhile, virtually everyone’s sprinklers still go on when it rains. We still stand in the shower as long as we want to. Unlike those midsum-mer electric bills, we pay for our water without much regret. And we plan for more and more population growth—after a slowdown that started with the burst of the housing bubble—even though there will be less and less water.

Thanks to the Southern Nevada Wa-ter Authority (SNWA), we have made a monumental turnaround in the past quarter century, cutting water usage by 40 percent per person. Many of us have fgured out how to live without grass in our front yards. We’ve got-ten the message that “it’s a desert out there” via a series of funny, award-winning commercials.

But we still seem to be lacking enough public concern to nudge us toward truly being what the SNWA calls “a model city” of water effciency—or merely one that plans to be around for another 100 years.

Here, at the crossroads, comes SNWA’s latest four-year conservation plan, the frst in its new era of leadership (see Page

24), due to be fnalized next month. A prelimi-nary look reveals that it’s not much differ-ent than the old plan. However, a citizens ad-visory group is working on some conservation suggestions, which, if ap-proved, will be added to the plan within the next year.

As concerned citizens our-selves, on the occasion of Earth Day, we’re offering our own suggestions on how to better tackle our most vi-tal issue. Please join us in this discus-sion at VegasSeven.com/Water.

 Let’s act like we’re a model city

seen in the new york times recently: “Offcials [in Southern Nevada] boast that everyone could take a 20-minute shower every day without increasing the city’s water consumption by a drop.”

Putting aside whether that makes conservation sense or not (see point No. 2), how does that statement make you feel? Proud? Embarrassed? Nothing at all? Whatever the case, it probably doesn’t convince you to take a shorter shower, although we live in a place with only 4 inches of rain per year. The SNWA website points out that “a family of four taking daily fve-minute show-ers with a high-effciency showerhead can save more than 20,000 gallons of water each year,” but even if you’ve run into that fact, there’s not much incen-tive to apply the knowledge.

This is partly because that water you’re using actually costs less than in most Western cit-ies, including Seattle (37.5 inches of rain per

year), which is great for our libertarian spirit

and wallets, but not for our grasp of sustainability.

And it’s not just money; our community also sides with con-

sumerism in tone. Look at this excerpt from the FAQ section of the SNWA webpage regarding the recent (and modest) water-rate hike:

Will this increase make water bills unaffordable? Even after the additional charge is incorporated, water bills in South-ern Nevada will remain less than in the aver-age Western city despite our arid climate. Cit-ies with similar traits such as size, population or climate such as Santa Fe, San Diego, Phoe-nix and Seattle all pay higher water rates.

What our rates should be is a whole other cover story (although we will share that Brett Walton of CircleOfBlue.org says, “In most cities, the cost of water for the customer is far too low to incentivize conservation”), but such appeasements leave us with an ambiguous feeling:

Is it a desert out there or not?What’s our message—to ourselves,

to the Southwest, to the readers of The New York Times? It needs to be stronger than reminders about watering our lawns at the right times. We’ve out-grown that stage as a community.

And what about the 40 million an-nual visitors who make our water dis-trict unique—not to mention impos-sible to compare with other districts—

because they factor into our per-cap-ita-water-use formula? Do they care that it’s a desert out here? Right now, 28,000 of our 150,000 hotel rooms have invitations for guests to skip linen service, for example. Maybe we should try to get half of them onboard by year’s end. That’s a lot of towels.

Times are changing. Habits need to change, too. In this new drought-ravaged era, that starts with a more ur-gent dialogue about what’s at stake and a tougher attitude about living within our means—a means that’s changing as sure as luck at a craps table.

The good news is, we hear that the SNWA is working on a next-generation ad campaign, targeting a whole differ-ent type of water-consuming agenda. We expect it will inspire us in a variety of new ways.

 Put indoor-water use back into the conservation conversation

if you were alive in america in the late 1970s, you probably remember the frst California water crisis and its ac-companying catchphrase, “If it’s yellow, let it mellow,” encouraging residents to not fush their toilets after “No. 1.”

Here in the desert, where our al-lotment from the Colorado River has been set since 1922, when Clark Coun-ty had a population of less than 5,000, there’s too little discussion about in-door water use, let alone a campaign designed to change habits.

We do a great job of managing our river allotment—300,000 acre-feet per

Get Out of the Damn Shower!

And fve other suggestions for a water-secure future

T H E E C O I S S U E

By P H I L H A G E N ,

J E S S I C A K A N T O R and

G R E G B L A K E M I L L E R

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A Short To-Do List for Good Citizens

Resolve to actually follow the summer

watering guidelines (available at SNWA.com), which benefit not only conservation and your water bill, but the health of your yard. (Little-known fact: Watering your lawn all seven days is actually bad for your grass, so give it a day off.)

Better yet, rip up that turf. SNWA

continues to offer “cash for grass” programs.

The SNWA has other good

rebates, including smart-water timers, rain sensors and pool covers, which can save more than 10,000 gallons of water from evaporating each year.

Use a landscaper who is a certified

“Water Smart Contractor” because a) they should know how to properly install/manager your irrigation, and b) it’s good incentive for more landscape companies to certify their workers.

Work common-sense tactics into

your daily routine: Don’t flush after No. 1. Turn the faucet off while brushing your teeth. Try a shower military style (lather up without the water running, then turn it back on to rinse); it’s more tolerable when it’s hot out. Water plants using the water left over after boiling noodles. Don’t let zombie waiters keep refilling your glass at restaurants.

Got a water-saving

tip to share with us?

Send it to Comments@

VegasSeven.com.

“The thing that concerns water managers is we know from the paleohydrology on the Colorado River that it goes through 30-to-50-year droughts. That’s well established. We need to be prepared for that, and the climate-change data we’re seeing is affecting the snow pack in the Rocky Mountains—not so much the amount, but the March-April temperatures in the Rockies are getting warmer and going directly from solid to gaseous rather than melting off as water in the river stream. The scary part is seeing droughts and climate change coupled.”

— JOHN ENTSMINGER , SNWA GENERAL MANAGER

“We are using essentially all of the water that the Colorado River can

provide, yet several states have the legal right to draw more water from

the river, and, as far as I know, plan to do so. At the same time, the

Southwest is one of the fastest-growing parts of the country. And on

top of this, the agreements on how to distribute the water were signed

during one of the wettest periods in the past 600 years, and human-

caused climate change is likely to reduce the water available. Obviously

this is not a sustainable situation. My belief is that when these problems

with water supply come to a head … there will be enough political will

generated to come to a new agreement on how to distribute the water,

one that takes better account of all these different factors.”

— DAVID W. PIERCE , SCRIPPS INSTITUTION OF OCEANOGRAPHY,

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SAN DIEGO

able. In 1997, when state Senator Dina Titus—now a congresswoman—pro-posed a “ring around the Valley,” the idea never got traction. As the area’s water problems intensify, though, the proposal may merit a second look.

But by whom? SNWA will tell you that it’s actually the job of Western water managers to prepare for population in-creases. And it appears there’s little po-litical will to retrain Southern Nevadans.

“If you ask the County Commission, they say, ‘The SNWA hasn’t alerted us that there’s a problem with water and population growth,’” says John Hiatt, director of the Desert Wetlands Con-servancy. “If you ask the SNWA, they say, ‘We have to supply water to who-ever asks for it.’ Both say they do not have the authority to control growth. It’s a very large scenario of plausible deniability. No one wants to address it. The person who stands up and says, ‘We need to do something about this’ won’t have a job for very much longer.”

Plausible deniability, Hiatt says, is fast becoming an unaffordable luxury with states now looking to take their full al-lotments from the Colorado River.

“No one wants to infringe on the rights that help make America the country she is, but what happens when migration rights infringe upon living rights?” he asks. “When water is on the line, life is on the line. We may not be in a life-or-death situation yet, but something needs to be done now to stop that dismal future from playing out. The SNWA and the County Com-mission need to work together on this project—now, before it is too late.”

Even if the water supply restrictions don’t end up affecting us, we simply can’t ever grow like we did in the last two decades of the 20th century. We can’t sustain another 1.3 million peo-ple, as is projected for 2050.

“On the Colorado, the long-term con-cern for SNWA is … a recognition that the 300,000 acre-feet that the agency gets today is probably the best it’s ever going to get,” says Doug Kenney, director of the Western Water Policy Program at the Uni-versity of Colorado. “There’s no upside.”

And SNWA’s proposed deus ex

machina—the pipeline that would take groundwater from northeastern Ne-vada—is fraught with political, legal and fnancial challenges. For one thing, its cost has been estimated at anywhere from $7 billion to $15 billion. For anoth-er, the people of northeastern Nevada are none too pleased at the prospect of having their water taken from them.

 Drop the pipeline dream

on the surface, the pipeline logic is compelling: The state does not need to go outside its means because there’s plenty of water here—it’s just in the wrong part of the state. But then you look below the surface, and it’s a lot less pretty.

“It is very expensive, and it won’t replace the Colorado River water,” Hiatt says. “It will be about one-third of present usage. There are a lot of bet-ter and more effcient ways to fx the problem. For instance, 10 percent of usage is water being lost to leaks in the pipes. We should be able to fx this and get 10 percent of our water back.”

“The real solution,” Kenney says, “is that the seven states as a whole just need to use less water. That’s a much more practical solution than trying to fnd more water to bring into the ba-sin. A lot of people talk about pipelines to bring water into the basin, but that’s just not practical. The solution is to use less water in the basin—and there are a lot of opportunities to do that.”

The pipeline is not living within our means. And we bet there are better ways to spend those billions.

 More out-of-the-box innovation

“when talking about the states that use the Colorado River, Nevada is different from the other six because it uses its water in urban areas,” Kenney says. “A lot of the tricks and strategies that

other places, like California, would use—temporarily stopping some agriculture, for instance—aren’t viable in Las Vegas.”

One far-out option is that Nevada could help fnance desalination in California (it’s very expensive). If we’d help fund the studies and implemen-tation so that California can get a large part of its water from the ocean, we could get part of California’s Colo-rado River allocation.

Here’s another type of trade agree-ment: Get another state to implement a water conservation program, and redirect some of those benefts to Las Vegas. “You have to set up the rules that give everyone some incentive to take action to conserve water,” Kenney says. The most obvious of the “creative arrangements” to him would involve a form of interstate water market-ing. “For example, a deal in which Las Vegas pays to fallow some low-value crops upstream—perhaps in Wyoming or Colorado—and gets to use that saved water as it fows downstream. That sort of arrangement has never existed on the river, and to do so may require some signifcant legal changes. But over the past year, there’s been some discussions in which Lower Basin cities are looking to fnance some Upper Ba-sin fallowing—all with the knowledge that this should increase water fowing downstream and should help the stor-age situation in Lake Mead, which has obvious benefts for Las Vegas.”

On the other side of the spectrum—consumer demand—we could turn household or even corporate water conservation into a fun and potentially proftable challenge. Make it easier for people to see how much water they’re using and break it down, indoors and out. Houses could have a thermostat-size screen that shows daily water usage. When families see themselves reaching, say, 200 gallons indoors (said to be a water-effcient goal for a family of four), they could think clearly about how to cut back. SNWA could even sweeten the pot with prizes—gift certifcates and coupons for local merchants and restaurants—awarded to families that “keep it under 200” each day for an entire month.

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➜ john entsminger has been the close-cropped, crisp, shirt-and-tie guy behind former water czar Pat Mulroy at the Southern Nevada Water Au-thority since 1999. While Mulroy was sometimes characterized as forceful, Entsminger speaks with a tone of calm certainty, of stability. Of reassurance.

Entsminger, 42, became general manager of the SNWA in February. He had come to the authority straight out of the University of Colorado Law School; as deputy council, he worked the front line of Colorado River policy, earning the high regard that would ultimately make him Mulroy’s hand-picked successor. Over the years, he has shaped an approach to water poli-tics that’s not about Wild West wars between the states. Instead, it’s about striving for “professionalism, collabo-ration and cooperation.”

“We are blessed—and I don’t think that’s overstating it—on the Colorado with tremendously strong partner-ships and working relationships not only between the states but the munic-ipalities,” he says. “It’s one of the points that differentiates the Colorado from some of the more antagonistic and judicially inclined river systems we’ve seen around the country.”

Of course that wasn’t always the case. As the source of water for seven dry states and northern Mexico, the Lower Basin of the river has been, and in many ways continues to be, the subject of much legal wrangling. Exhibit A is the battle over the proposed pipeline to suck water from central and eastern Nevada to Southern Nevada—which Entsminger says is a last resort in the SNWA’s portfolio.

But ask him about the history of poli-tics on the river, and he ticks off a list of successes, starting with the 1995 Cen-tral Arizona Project (an aqueduct that diverts water from the Colorado River into southern Arizona), which he views as the moment when attitudes shifted from antagonism to cooperation, up to 2012’s Minute 319, which allowed water to fow into Mexico again this spring.

That spirit of cooperation, Entsminger says, is born of a mutual understanding that all Colorado River Compact states will suffer if the water dries up. “We [have] a set of profession-als on the river who ... have years of ex-perience and who realize that you have this supply-and-demand issue.”

When Mulroy tapped him to be her successor, she noted, “We’re at a very critical time right now in our relation-

ships with the other states. John under-stands this. He understands the play-ers, the culture, the politics, the laws, and we have to have somebody who can step seamlessly into [my] shoes.”

As the region faces drought and cli-mate change, and Las Vegans watch Lake Mead drop while the Water Au-thority races to fnish the third intake pipe, Entsminger sees his job as three-fold: encourage further reduction of outdoor water use; acquire more water (that’s where his relationship-building and negotiating skills will be tested); and secure and maintain current infra-structure and facilities.

In the conservation arena, Entsminger, like Mulroy before him, cites the Valley’s success in reducing water rates through turf tear-out in-centives and water recycling.

“I think we have a higher [conserva-tion] awareness than most metropoli-tan areas in the United States,” he says.

“But certainly as long as water is com-ing out of the tap it’s not something people think about every day. You can always do more, but we’re pretty proud of the level of education and outreach that we’ve done.”

Entsminger’s true specialty is deal-ing with the big picture, navigating the complexities of interstate water management. While his leadership requires a degree of fghting for the home team, he says that Colorado Riv-er water management is not as simple as Las Vegas versus Phoenix or Los An-geles. The economies supported by the Colorado are intricately interwoven.

“If you like to eat salad, you’re re-sponsible for a percentage of that Colorado water being deployed to the Imperial Valley or Coachella Valley [in California] where [lettuce] is growing,” he says. “Or if you like the idea of tak-ing a rafting trip down the Grand Can-yon someday, you’re infuencing how

Glen Canyon Dam is operated and what that recreation economy has to do with the use of the Colorado River.”

So negotiating for collaborative management of the entire river’s use, not just managing Southern Nevada’s use, is a key duty.

That doesn’t mean Entsminger is unconcerned about the challenge of Southern Nevada’s population growth, but that he thinks it’s manageable. How it’s managed will determine whether and how further acquisition of water may be necessary—through the in-state pipeline, or trade with future (hypothetical) desalinization plants in Mexico, or more negotiation with river partners, depending on the decisions of local political leaders.

“[So] it’s not whether you grow, it’s how you grow,” he says. “Growth does not necessarily increase your use of water. Our own experience in Las Vegas belies this common association of a one-to-one correlation between growth and an increase in use of water. Our own community in the last 12 years has reduced the consumptive use by 33 percent at the same time our popula-tion has increased by 25 percent.

“If you want to go back to ’70s-style, half-acre lots with wall-to-wall turf, there’s a fnite amount our resources can support. If you want to do the Manhattanization of Las Vegas that was talked about in 2006, you can do that without a material increase in the amount of water that you consume out of Lake Mead. I’m not advocating for that kind of increased growth in Las Vegas, but it’s my job to say you need to make decisions in accordance with these facts [about water availability].”

But development decisions ultimately should be made by the community, he says.

“The role of the Water Authority is to provide the tools to let the commu-nity be what the community wants to be,” he says. “I don’t think it’s our job to tell the community what it wants to be. There are a number of private and governmental functions that drive what the community is going to look like, everything from zoning to busi-ness licensing to, on the private side, investment decisions and lending.

“The Water Authority needs to be a foundational element to support those community decisions. I don’t see us [ever] having a regulatory role, but I see us having a voice about the wise use of water.”

The River Captain In water policy, life on the Colorado can be rocky. But new water boss

John Entsminger aims to keep Southern Nevada’s ride smooth.

By S TA C Y J . W I L L I S

“The role of the Water Authority is to provide

the tools to let the community be what the

community wants to be.”

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Where’s the Bottom? Art by Robert Beckmann

➜ “When I found an old ‘fsh fnder’

printout from a 1980s trip to Lake

Mead, it sparked a meditation on our

Valley’s diminishing water supply.

The fsh fnder, as it happened, also

monitored the lake bottom. And guess

what: Many of our old fshing holes are

now above ground! So it’s hard not to

wonder when we’ll bottom out. ‘Global

weirding’ has drastically reduced snow

pack in the Rockies, and with it the

capacity of our great survival resource,

the Colorado River. Makes the Lake

Mead I remember seem impossibly

distant—and unfathomably deep.”

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NIGHTLIFEYour city after dark, photos from the week’s hottest parties and booth time with Jason Lema

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Welcome to Miami

For a handful of Las Vegas expatriates,

the road to the Southeast is paved with gold

By Melinda Sheckells

SEATED IN THE DINING ROOM of the Bazaar by José Andrés in the SLS

Hotel in South Beach, I am having a cocktail appropriately

named #SaharaToSLS, and all around me the buzz is about

SLS Las Vegas, SBE’s newest resort, opening Labor Day

weekend in the former Sahara footprint. Our server asks me

what it is like to live in Las Vegas, and he tells me he’s hoping

for a transfer to Andrés’ Bazaar Meat, slated for a restaurant

slot at SLS Las Vegas. The manager says one of his colleagues

just left that morning for his new job as SLS Las Vegas’

director of food and beverage.

Miami’s E11even nightclub could soonbecome Las Vegas’ E11even nightclub.

The talent, however, isn’t solely head-ed west. For six months, a stream of in-fuential Las Vegans have been making their way to Miami to open nightclubs and restaurants. Leading the pack are chef Carla Pellegrino and nightclub im-presario Cy Waits. As celebrity kitchens and electronic dance music created a new kind of boom in the desert, it also has swept South Beach. Miami clubs are booking the same names as the Strip, and DJs are cashing in big from coast to coast, with Miami being called Vegas with a beach, and Las Vegas the Miami of the desert.

Waits, former man-aging partner of Drai’s and XS, recently opened Adoré Nightclub dur-ing Miami Music Week. With 40 tables, Adoré is Sin City stylish. “We are bringing Vegas to Miami,” Waits says. Adoré has fourishes such as tufted leather couches (fortifed against stilettos with Kevlar); cellphone chargers at every booth, as well as locked cabinets to prevent theft; a cus-tomized video chandelier; and a foor-to-ceiling LED by the DJ booth. Lighting and sound accounted for more than $2

million of Adoré’s budget. Behind the scenes, there’s Champagne in the ladies room, as well as heated baby wipes. The emphasis is on boutique programming, with DJs including Morgan Page and Rebecca & Fiona. Waits is also focused on creating a strong industry night on Thursdays, a still wide-open opportu-

nity in the city. “We’re not selling bottles,” Waits explains, “we’re selling an experience.”

Pellegrino, formerly of Rao’s in Caesars Pal-ace and the Meatball Spot in Town Square as well as owner of Bratalian in Hen-derson, migrated to Miami in late 2013 to open Touché Rooftop Lounge & Restau-rant atop E11even, a 25,000-square-foot hybrid space that is all at once a dayclub, nightclub, gentle-

man’s club and after-hours. Touché offers 360-degree views of the Miami skyline and indoor/outdoor seating via a retractable roof. “The concept is a unique fusion of a fne-dining experi-ence paired with a rooftop lounge,” says the Top Chef alum. “Downtown Miami is an up-and-coming area right

now. It’s also the very frst time in my career that I am catering to several dif-ferent audiences and working closely alongside DJs and their great music.” And while Touché crowns E11even, Pellegrino is quick to point out that her place has its own identity, purpose and musical programming apart from the party palace below. “I’m sure that there is crossover with our clientele and E11even since we are all in the same building, but 70 percent of our customers are only ours,” she says.

Downstairs, E11even is a round-the-clock entertainment experience conceived by Dennis DeGori. Partners also include Gino LoPinto, Ken DeGori, Derick Henry and Danny Solomon, all of whom have spent most of their ca-reers in Las Vegas. “I came to Miami as I believed in its undeniable resurgence and saw a lot of parallels between Vegas of 2002 and today’s Miami,” DeGori says. “I knew exactly what direction I wanted to take.”

By day, E11even pulses with a cast of topless entertainers. At night, E11even Theatr11cs takes hold of the nightclub space, where the dancers are joined by performance artists, aerialists and con-tortionists (many of whom have worked in Las Vegas), all set against a backdrop of state-of-the-art sound and lighting technology. After hours, E11even Theat-r11cs and the dancers spill into the caba-

ret. There’s a full menu from Touché, as well as 32 VIP rooms. Despite the top-lessness, “E11even looks, feels and acts like a nightclub venue,” DeGori says. “We cater to both a male and female cli-entele.” Putting it into Las Vegas terms, DeGori says he classifes E11even as “a 24/7-Hakkasan-meets-the-Spearmint-Rhino-meets-Cirque du Soleil-meets-Drai’s Afterhours. With great food.”

Will we soon be seeing an Adoré, Touché or E11even exported to Las Vegas? At least one of these expats pre-dicts yes, and sooner rather than later. “I already have two locations under review for expansion into the Las Ve-gas market,” DeGori says.

Visit VegasSeven.com/MiamiToVegas

for a Las Vegas girl’s guide to where

to eat, stay and play in Miami.VE

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ADORÉ 2000 Collins

Ave., Miami Beach,

305-203-0303,

ClubAdore.com.

E11EVEN 29 NE

11th St., Miami,

305-829-2911,

11Miami.com.

TOUCHÉ 15 NE 11th

St., Miami,

305-358-9848,

ToucheMiami.com.

Touché features a retractable roof with panoramic views of downtown Miami; Cy Waits (bottom).

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IF YOU’RE IN LAS VEGAS, and you see a guy subconsciously karate chopping to the rhythm in the DJ booth, that’s probably Jason Lema. Named Best Resident DJ by this publication in 2012, the local spinner holds it down multiple times a week at Marquee Nightclub & Dayclub, as well as at Create in Los Angeles. We caught up with Lema between weekend sets to chat about his Miami roots and his recent foray into producing.

Was there a particular moment that made you want to become a DJ?

I frst came across dance music in Miami, my hometown. Back when I was 19, I used to listen to early hip-hop, Depeche Mode, rock. Then I started going out and got exposed to different genres of house and breaks. In the ’90s, I started DJing as a hobby,

just for fun to see what it was like, and bought some turntables.

But it wasn’t until you moved to Las Vegas that DJing took off as a career?

I lined up a couple of gigs at V Bar, and my frst residency was at Ghost-bar. Then I moved around and started playing more house-y stuff. I started doing Risqué at Paris Las Vegas, then started my own circuit party out here called Midnight Snack with a buddy of mine, Doug Gibbs; it lasted for about three years. Right around that time Tao Group came to Vegas, and they were shopping around for DJs—they needed somebody who was going to play house in their restaurant. I started my relationship with them andit’s kind of been a blur since. When Marquee opened, it gave me an op-

portunity to showcase more of my electronic side.

Since you don’t want to step on the toes of the headlining DJs playing after you at Marquee, how do you get into their minds to prevent playing the same thing?

I feel like I tailor it to every guy. My early sets are going to be exactly what I feel is good: deep tech house. But, depending on the DJ, I try to do my homework to see what they’ve been playing. Say it’s Armin [van Buuren]. I’m defnitely going to go light, noth-ing over the top, and keep the BPMs slow and smooth—just kind of tease the crowd. Build it up, bring it down. Every DJ is going to be different. If it’s Kaskade, I know he likes soulful songs, so right before he goes on I try to keep it deep and soulful.

Winter Music Conference/Miami Music Week has become massive. Being that you’re from Miami, what changes have you noticed at these events?

When the conference came to Mi-ami, it was still really small; you had to know the DJ or somebody to get in because these were all label parties and industry. They didn’t care about the cover; they cared about getting the right people in there to hear Danny Te-neglia play for 300 people. So I started

to go out and meet DJs and make connections. It was very much about the music—not that it’s not now, but it was a really special feeling to see all of these industry people breaking out new records.

Who are some of your DJ idols?Danny Teneglia, Icey—growing up

in Florida it was all about breaks and a very cool sound. Carl Cox. George Acosta was a local guy in Miami at the time. Then there was Oscar G; he was awesome.

What sound are you aiming for with your productions?

I’ve been working on [original] music for about a year now, and I’ve got a couple of tracks that are going to be released soon. One is with singer Christina Novelli, called “Magnetic Nights.” I have a big range from deep techy stuff to progressive. I like some hard electro stuff, too. So my frst track is very light progressive with a chunky sound and a really good vocal. I also have some other stuff that’s going to be a little bit more aggressive. I defnitely want to get a nice vocal, something distinct that you can enjoy. A vocal really leaves an imprint and gives you something to think about.

When everyone is singing along, that’s kinda cool, too.

Lema’s MagnetismThe Tao Group resident, who turned his hobby into

a profession, matches hits with megastars and

makes a play to become one in his own right

By Deanna Rilling

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ARTISAN1501 W. Sahara Ave.

[ UPCOMING ]

April 18 Justin Key and J Diesel spin

April 19 M!ke Attack spins

April 21 XXX Karaoke Night

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PURECaesars Palace

[ UPCOMING ]

April 18 M!ke Attack spins

May 2 DJ Melo D spins

May 16 The Weeknd performs

54

The soy sauce-based broth is pretty good, but the massive helping of bean sprouts and cabbage made it diffcult to enjoy the noodles. Sadly, this is almost more of a salad than ramen.

As great as the noodles at Hiro-maru are, don’t overlook the side dishes. While most of the ramen include chashu pork, the pork bowl over rice gives it the spotlight it

deserves. The meat is tender, juicy and favorful. But I’m even more impressed with the chef’s take on fried rice. The Chinese staple is given a Japanese touch with a freshly cracked egg, scallions, rice and a bit more of that beautiful pork served on a hot stone and mixed together tableside.

Finally, the restaurant offers a pretty decent version of the Japanese fried-chicken dish, karaage. I’m not generally a fan of this appetizer because most places in town make it with very little seasoning. But the batter here is excellent. My only problem is that they tend to use mediocre cuts of chicken. That complaint notwithstanding, it’s still the best version in Las Vegas.

The local Japanese dining scene continues to get better and better, because it’s getting more and more diverse. Hiromaru is a great new addition because it pushes the envelope. Sure, this probably isn’t the kind of Japanese food you would have found in Tokyo 30 years ago. But for Las Vegas in 2014, it’s delicious.

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A SOUFFLE FROM THE EASTER BUNNY, A SANDWICH FROM A PIZZERIA AND NEWS FROM MINAIn the holiday candy game, Easter candy

rules: Starburst jellybeans (red only, please),

marshmallow Peeps (two days stale, please)

and hollow milk chocolate bunnies (don’t

judge me when I give the poor thing a

craniotomy). But the quintessential Easter

confection is the Cadbury Crème Egg, a thick

chocolate shell filled with sweet white-and-

yellow goo. And that very egg is going into

the seasonal soufflé at Andre’s (in Monte

Carlo, 798-7151, AndreLV.com). The French

restaurant actually has a soufflé du jour cal-

endar, says pastry chef Tammy Alana. “We try

to get playful with the holiday picks. I feel the

Cadbury egg is such a classic—I remember

those sweet commercials. Why not try it?”

The chocolate soufflé is prepared as

usual, then the Cadbury egg is dropped in the

middle as it bakes. When dessert is presented

at the table, the chocolate shell is at the right

temperature to crack easily, while the egg

fondant contents ooze into the soufflé.

Shifting from soufflés to sandwiches, slowly

but surely I’ve been eating my way through

the Linq, including stopping in for a slice

(more like four slices) at Flour and Barley

(430-4430, FlourAndBarley.com). While the

brick-oven pizzas of the Diavola and Carbon-

ara variety were good, the one dish I couldn’t

stop eating was the Salsicce sandwich. I only

ordered it because I didn’t get a pizza with

any Italian sausage, and I’m a sucker for good

salsicce. The sweet, well-spiced link is split

in half and grilled, then dressed with tomato

sauce, peppers and onions, broccoli rabe and

mozzarella. The beauty of this sandwich lies

in its construction: The integrity of the bun,

made by local Bon Breads, holds up under the

weight and consistency of the filling.

In other new restaurant news, Michael

Mina’s seafood and grill-centric American

Fish (in Aria, 590-8610) will close in July to

make way for a more French identity: Bardot

Brasserie, set to open this winter. I’m a fan

of the chef-driven interpretations of French

cuisine that can be found at Mina’s RN74s in

San Francisco and Seattle from chefs Adam

Sobel and David Varley, respectively, and

I wish that was the route Mina was taking

here. But he knows his Las Vegas clientele,

and a classic bistro concept will do well,

especially once the roving shellfish cart takes

a lap around the dining room. In addition to

mobile crustaceans, Bardot Brasserie’s menu

will feature French favorites such as roasted

bone marrow with bacon marmalade, foie

gras en croute and steak frites. Le burger on

the menu speaks Français as well—the dry-

aged steak burger is topped with nutty Comté

cheese, caramelized onions and Bordelaise.

Grace Bascos eats, sleeps, raves and repeats.

Read more from Grace at VegasSeven.com/

DishingWithGrace, as well as on her dining-

and-music blog, FoodPlusTechno.com

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Get the latest on local restaurant openings and closings, interviews with top chefs, cocktail recipes, menu previews and more in our weekly “Sips and Bites” newsletter. Subscribe at VegasSeven.com/SipsandBites.

Lacey freshly cracked egg surrounds the

house special fried rice.

HIROMARU FUSION RAMEN

5300 Spring Mountain Rd.,

534-7878. Open for lunch and

dinner 11 a.m.–11 p.m. Mon–Sat,

11 a.m.–10 p.m. Sun. Dinner for

two, $20-$30.

Al’s Menu Picks

Fried rice ($6.50), chashu pork bowl

($6.50), carbonara ramen ($11),

kuroi tonkotsu ($8).

HAPPILY LONGER ON CHILLS THAN ENTRAILS, the crafty new horror flm Oculus is about a haunted mirror. Three years ago, writer-director Mike Flanagan made the similarly low-budget Absentia, which dealt with a haunted pedestrian underpass. In this genre, it’s good to be specifc.

Certainly Flanagan, whose latest comes from a 2005 short flm, has learned the virtues of a simple idea, fruitfully elaborated. His co-writer, Jeff Howard, worked on both the short version of Oculus and the feature version. The script takes the time to make us care about the fates of a brother and a sister we meet frst in fashback, then 11 years later. In the prologue, young Kaylie (Annalise Basso) and Tim (Garrett Ryan) are beset in their home by ... we’re not sure, exactly. Demon-eyed specters? Their murderous father, played by Rory Cochrane? Mom, or demon-mom, portrayed by Katee Sackhoff?

It’s quick and evocative, this appetizer, and Oculus brings us up to speed effciently. The adult Tim—charged with the murder of his parents that long-ago night—is about to be released from a mental institution. He’s played by promising

Australian actor Brenton Thwaites; in the key role, Dr. Who alum Karen Gillan is the adult Kaylie, driver of the narrative, determined to prove her brother’s innocence.

The mirror did it! Carved, we’re told, out of precious “Bavarian black cedar,” the antique mirror hangs on the wall of Dad’s home offce in the childhood sequences in “Oculus.” Most horror flms are relatively sparing in their use of back story fashback; the novelty here, which works well until the last 10 minutes or so, is Flanagan’s tight interweave between past- and present-day action, tight enough to inch into

pure, dreamy hallucination. Having retrieved the mirror and returned it to the scene of the crime, Gillan’s Kaylie sets up a three-camera videography experiment in their late father’s home offce in order to record whatever evil spirits, or refections, the mirror can throw at her and Tim. Mission: “to kill it,” Kaylie says.

Gillan rattles through a considerable amount of exposition in Oculus, and she has a way of doing so that makes the whole premise faintly comic on the surface yet completely grave un-derneath. The younger actors in the fashback half of the movie undergo a

lot of realistic anguish; there are times when the flm’s spooky fun becomes grim enough to disqualify itself as fun. But Flanagan’s a skillful director and editor, and simply by placing the camera in logical but unusual places, such as high above and slightly in front of a performer, the tension increases moment by moment, ghost by ghost, frightening refection by refection. Referencing bits of The Shining, The Stepfather and a few other standards, Oculus lacks a big fnish. It does not, however, lack for sequel possibilities.

Oculus (R) ★★★✩✩

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SHORT REVIEWS By Tribune Media Services

REFLECTIONS OF FEAR

Mirror Mirror, who’s the

scariest of them all?

By Michael Phillips Tribune Media Services

A&E

Draft Day (PG-13) ★★★✩✩ Draft Day feels like a play, in the same

way J.C. Chandor’s 2011 Margin Call felt

that way. Set mostly in a series of offices

across 13 hours in a pressure-cooked

day, the film lives and dies on the low-key,

take-it-easy spectacle of Kevin Costner

maneuvering through an administrative

obstacle course, crises intermingling with

draft-pick opportunities. Costner plays

the (fictional) general manager of the

Cleveland Browns. Costner’s range as an

actor remains an open question. But he

carries the movie easily and well.

Dom Hemingway (R) ★★ ✩✩ In this facile, Guy Ritchie-esque crime

jape, Jude Law plays a London safecracker

of insatiable appetites and Olympian self-

regard. Writer-director Richard Shepard

(The Matador) introduces Dom in prison,

near the end of a 12-year sentence. Once

out of prison—he took the fall for his

underworld employer, a Russian assassin

played by Demian Bichir—Dom is hellbent

on settling old scores. Visually, the film

is as loud as Law’s performance. The

material, limited payoff; the performer at

the center, never less than arresting.

Captain America: The Winter Soldier (PG-13) ★★★✩✩

This is a better-than-average Marvel

superhero bash, intriguingly plotted and

clever in its speculations about 21st-

century life for Steve Rogers, a.k.a. Captain

America, as he contends with contemporary

geopolitics. There is no “just enough” in

today’s computer-generated Marvel marvels;

there is only “too much.” And there’s a,

element of hypocrisy in this film, which

bemoans America’s bloodthirsty, weapons-

mad impulses even as it offers an obscene

body count for fun and profit.

Frankie & Alice (R) ★★✩✩✩ True cases of people suffering from

multiple personality disorders are

harrowing. So it’s a shame that the movies

have rendered such rarities humdrum and

routine. But actors just love the idea of

slinging several accents during the course

of a film. Halle Berry certainly did. That

goes a long way in explaining Frankie &

Alice, a long-shelved 2010 melodrama

“based on true events.” And Berry, winner

of an Oscar for Monster’s Ball, treats this

showcase for what it is—an acting exercise,

and a fairly broad one.

MOVIES

Can these siblings (Karen Gillan and Brenton Thwaites) prove the mirror did it?

The Grand Budapest Hotel (R) ★★★★✩ Wes Anderson’s newest film is many things.

The Grand Budapest Hotel qualifies as his

most exotically remote achievement in terms

of locale; most of it takes place in a fictitious

Eastern European province in the early

1930s. It’s also one of Anderson’s cleverest

and most gorgeous movies, dipping just

enough of a toe in the real world—and in

the melancholy works of its acknowledged

inspiration, the late Austrian writer Stefan

Zweig—to prevent the whole thing from

floating off into the ether of minor whimsy.

Divergent (PG-13) ★★✩✩✩ In Veronica Roth’s young-adult trilogy

of best-selling futuristic hellholes,

being a “divergent” means you avoid

easy categorization. The movie version

of Divergent is no divergent. It’s tame,

formulaic and strictly by the book in every

sense. As in The Hunger Games, we have

an underestimated young heroine. The

generic bulk of Divergent hits its marks and

moves on. Here’s hoping the second movie,

scheduled to be released a year from now,

rebels against the establishment in more

ways than one.

Muppets Most Wanted (PG) ★★✩✩✩Good times are hard to come by in Muppets

Most Wanted, the anxious follow-up to the

successful 2011 reboot (The Muppets) and

the seventh Muppet sequel to follow in the

animal tracks of The Muppet Movie in 1979.

The film begins seconds after filming has

wrapped on the 2011 Muppet Movie. Off they

go on a European tour, which turns out

to be a cover for a plot to steal the crown

jewels. Here, the atmosphere’s soured; the

Muppets are treated as dismissible foils for

the venal real-world populace.

Bad Words (R) ★★★✩✩ Sarcastic, sanctimonious, salacious, sly, slight

and surprisingly sweet, the black comedy of

Bad Words, starring and directed by Jason

Bateman, is high-minded, foul-mouthed good

nonsense. The movie zeros in on the bizarre

world of spelling bees, a petri dish of strange

behavior between bright kids and zealous

parents. The filmmaker has surrounded

himself with a solid cast of distinctive comic

and character actors, including Kathryn Hahn,

Allison Janney, Ben Falcone and Philip Baker

Hall. The drama is basically split between

hotel rooms and spelling bee stages.

Noah (PG-13) ★★★✩✩Darren Aronofsky’s strange and often rich

Noah deserves better handling than a plainly

nervous Paramount Pictures has given it. This

Noah, played with steely purpose by Russell

Crowe, is a flawed, angry and murderously

conflicted man just trying to do his job: Listen

to the Creator, prepare for the cleansing, an-

nihilating flood, fulfill his mission and then live

with the emotional consequences. The movie

is unpredictable, which is saying something,

and it argues rather sweetly that if we had

just listened to Noah, we’d all be more careful

stewards of the only planet we’ve got.

Sabotage (R) ★★✩✩✩ There’s a weird, bashful moment in Sabotage

when Olivia Williams, atypically cast as a

tough Atlanta police detective, is drawn like

a moth to the flame of Arnold Schwarzeneg-

ger’s lips. At least screenwriters Ayer and

Skip Woods keep the moral compass spinning

in circles before selling out in the end. A “drug

war god,” John “Breacher” Wharton is the

Schwarzenegger role. It’s amusing to watch

an actor try to wring some juice out of juice-

free material. It’s less amusing to contemplate

how much further an R-rated kill-’em-up can

go in the blood-spritz department.

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We'll finish it.

But you can’t talk about population growth anymore without also talking about water. Given our water scarcity, aren’t we nearing the point of having to turn away people at the border?

I don’t know that we’ll ever turn people away at the bor-der. At some point, however, the [water] restrictions that are going to be imposed will make it very diffcult for us to ac-commodate growth, whether that’s because the quality of life is reduced or you’re just not al-lowed to build more housing.

The drought is a long-term issue, [and] water policy—in particular conservation—is go-ing to permeate almost every-thing we do from an economic standpoint over the next decade, and probably longer. Water right now is probably in our top three in terms of is-sues we’re keeping an eye on.

What are the other two?One is employment for-

mation. We are very, very concerned about being able to continue to see jobs [cre-ated]. The other is going to be income growth. What we’ve seen over the past year is that jobs are being created, but the number of hours worked has not come back. And for a long time there, weekly wages were also dropping even though jobs were being created. Now weekly wages are starting to fnd their way back up, and that’s pretty encouraging.

Some of that has to do with the fastest-growing sector of our economy: construction. Where the overall economy grew by about 2.5 percent in the past year, construction grew by in excess of 9 percent.

Your frm, Applied Analy-sis, recently released the Las Vegas Perspective, the annu-al comprehensive report for the Valley. What’s the one statistic in there that would give the average resident reason to smile?

That’s gotta be home prices. We’ve got the highest home-ap-preciation in the United States today. That means $30 billion worth of recovery. That’s debt that someone doesn’t have anymore, and that’s equity that they found in that house again.

From our perspective, though, it’s not all smiles. We’ve gone from being the fastest-ap-preciating market in the United States to the fastest-depreciat-ing market in the United States, and now we’re the fastest ap-preciating again. We’ve been on this roller-coaster ride before,

and we know how it ends. Right now, we’re OK relative to where prices are in comparison to incomes, but we’re keeping a very close eye that we don’t cre-ate a bubble.

How do we know another bubble hasn’t already started to form?

Two reasons: The me-dian home price is only about $165,000, which is pretty close to where it should be relative to where incomes are, and you don’t have as much bank capital really pushing those values up. A lot of the transactions that we’re seeing are cash transac-tions. So if the property values go down, it’s not as though the banks will be in as much trou-ble as the investors. Now, the next logical question is: What if those investors start to divest? They own thousands and thou-sands and thousands of homes in the Las Vegas Valley. If they start to get skeptical about [our] real estate market, they’re go-ing to start to pull out.

And then we’re back to square one again?

I don’t know that we’d go back to square one. I don’t foresee that you’re going to see a $100,000 [home] unit again anytime soon. And if you did, people would come from all over the place and gobble them up—it would be short-lived. But if those investors [start to sell off], could we see a 10 per-cent decline in prices? Yeah. And would that make people pretty nervous again? Yes. And the single most important in-dicator in terms of how we’re going to perform [economi-cally] is the confdence of local consumers. Things are better. More people have jobs. Their incomes are going up. They’re feeling better because their home prices are going up. But we need to recognize that that confdence is fragile.

So should we be more wildly enthusiastic or cautiously optimistic that home prices are up more than 20 percent from a year ago?

Absolutely cautiously op-timistic. Look, the recovered equity is important, as is the fact that housing prices are closer to equilibrium. But the expectation that housing prices are going to increase by double digits over double dig-its over double digits may feel really good, but that’s a recipe for disaster over the short run. I’d much rather see 10 years of 5 percent growth than two years of 25 percent growth. P

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Nearly 100,000 new residents moved into the Valley in the past two years, and home prices are on the rise. Can we fnally say offcially that the Great Recession is in the rearview mirror?

Yeah, I think we can. Are we back to where we were at the peak, or anything along those lines? The answer to that question is absolutely not. I also think it’s somewhat unhealthy to ask, “Well, when are we going to get back to that level?” And I don’t have

a lot of clients that are currently spending a lot of time thinking that way. But for the last two years, we’ve added jobs—every sector of our economy added jobs over the past 12 months. We’ve also added income, housing prices have risen, [and] you’ve seen increases in investment on and off the Strip. The combination of those things is a clear indication to us that, yes, we have transitioned from an economy that’s in decline to an economy that’s growing again.