This past year Nevada Week has looked at everything from historic preservation in Las Vegas' reinvention to back to school during COVID and infrastructure.

This week on Nevada Week, we highlight some of the best conversations we've had this past year.

♪♪♪ Support for Nevada Week is provided by Senator William H. Hernstadt and additional supporting sponsors.

(Kipp Ortenburger) Welcome to Nevada Week.

Well, there was a lot to talk about in 2021: The COVID-19 vaccine and hesitancy to take it, the drought gripping the Southwest and its impact on water supply and growth, plus the hot housing market and the future of Las Vegas as the pandemic hopefully ends.

We'll look back at some of those conversations and more, but we start with a run-through of some of the conversations we had virtually while COVID restrictions were still in place.

(Gian Brosco) It has been incredibly inspiring to see a couple of different things.

One is that donor giving for us is up over 40% from last year out into the community, and secondly, the donor willingness to engage around what they're hearing out in the nonprofit community as opposed to hey, this is what I always give to, this is what I'm going to keep giving to.

(Dr. Kristen Averyt) So, you know, the planet's warming of course.

Nevada, we've warmed by about two degrees since the beginning of the 21st century.

But if you look at our urban areas, both Reno and Las Vegas, they've warmed an additional four degrees in Reno and five degrees in Las Vegas on top of what we've experienced with global warming.

That additional warming that we've experienced, it's because of the urban heat island effect.

It's the way that we build and what we build our environment, our urban environment out of that's creating that situation.

(Rev.

Dr. Karen Anderson) We realized that online, people are not going to engage for two hours, so you can't have a two-hour worship service online.

You have to learn to restructure and re-energize or re-engineer your worship while trying to maintain spirituality, trying to maintain the level of excitement about worship.

(Tony Manfredi) If anything, the pandemic has shown us all how much we miss going to see performances, going to see visual presentations of art and experiencing that together.

(Ben Kieckhefer) ESports can support multiple lanes of economic development for our state.

First, in supporting our existing industry, right, our single-largest and most important industry is the gaming and hospitality industry, and eSports offers immense opportunity to grow our customer base for Las Vegas and the state as a whole.

(Quentin Savwoir) Black women are most likely to be evicted in this country, and that eviction stays on their record as a scarlet letter.

And when they seek shelter or home somewhere else, it pushes them further away from the basic amenities that any family would need to have hopeful, thriving lives.

It pushes them further away from schools, grocery stores, healthcare clinics, pharmacies and so on.

-Well, late in the summer of 2020, UNLV got a new president.

Keith Whitfield became the school's 11th president in a tumultuous year.

We talked to him in May about the school's future.

-I did some research on you.

You ask "why" a lot, I've noticed.

Of course the most obvious question here is why, especially with where we're at, your new tenure here under the circumstances that you came into the role as president.

Why is "why" such an important question maybe instead of "how" or "what" here?

(Keith Whitfield) Yes.

"Why" ends up being a good question for understanding the mechanics, the intentions, the design.

We have an incredible-- I have-- I sit as president of an incredible university that has already done so much, so the "why" ends up being let's make sure that as we're making these great strides moving forward that we make sure we're doing it for the right reason, that we're answering and making sure that we fill in where there may be gaps in terms of need or opportunity.

So "why" ends up being a good question for a lot of reasons.

-I wanted to throw a "why" at you.

You describe UNLV as quote, hungry, a hungry institution.

Now, I want to put some context here.

This was in relation to faculty in a conversation around research.

Why hungry?

Why is that a good indicator?

-You know, hungry is a good indicator.

I have been at other universities.

I'm sure we might touch on it in a little while, but I've been at other universities, and that hunger piece of it makes you strive to do better.

It's very easy to become complacent, and I think with higher ed, much is changing as much as moving, that if you're not hungry to think about doing more and explore-- and actually, I have a few quote, unquote, famous quotes that I of course have gotten from somebody else-- which is to fail fast.

Don't sit and be so concerned about, you know, well, we've always done it this way, and it's comfortable that way.

Stretch yourself a little bit, okay?

Failing, we learn from failure anyway, and not that we're designed, that we're trying to design for failure, but we can actually learn from that.

And if we keep our mind open to that, we have a growth mindset, it actually allows us again to be a better university, which that's just what UNLV is.

It's been on track for doing it for a long time, and we're going to continue to do that in these precarious years that are going to be ahead of us.

-When the COVID-19 vaccine was released to the general public this past spring, some experts thought the pandemic would soon be behind us, but it became clear that some people were hesitant to get the vaccine.

We talked to a group of health professionals and community leaders about those concerns.

(Christina Madison) Really right now, the issue here is we're at a race, right?

So as much as we think the virus is something that we may want to be done with, the virus is not done with us.

And as we continue to have this pot of people who remain unvaccinated, they remain susceptible.

And those individuals, we know that 99.8% of people that are hospitalized and are dying from this virus were unvaccinated, which means that these deaths are all preventable which to me just seems uncanny, you know, that we're at this point that these individuals are dying needlessly.

So I think that's really where we're at right now is looking at this from the standpoint of people who we love that potentially could succumb to this virus.

So the longer it takes for us to get to that quote, unquote, herd immunity or community immunity, the more people are going to potentially have complications associated with this virus.

(Dr. Marc Kahn) We're learning more about this virus, you know, as time goes along.

I think, you know, I'm a hematologist by training, a blood doctor, so some of the blood complications are rare but fascinating.

We also are now seeing some long-term pulmonary complications.

There's clear data on cardiovascular complications, so this is a bad virus.

You don't want to get this virus, and again, as we've been saying, the best way to prevent this is to get vaccinated.

But let me just say one thing.

Vaccination really does two things: It protects you, but also it protects other people.

So when you get vaccinated, you're helping others because then you're not transmitting the virus to people who may in fact get more sick than you with an infection.

(Dr. Cindy Duke) I think what people need to know is every unvaccinated person who gets infected has the potential to become the new source of a new variant.

So I know many people are very worried about what about other variants?

Well, if you're unvaccinated, that's you.

You're the potential new source for a mutation that leads to a new variant that can ravage your community.

So that's where I think we need to talk more about that community responsibility and how the individual can help their own community because many people are scared of variants, but they think variants happen in far-flung places.

Variants are going to happen right here amongst us if we don't get vaccinated.

-In August the first-ever federal water shortage was declared on the Colorado River, putting into place water cutbacks in Arizona and Nevada.

Well, in June we talked to the head of the Southern Nevada Water Authority, John Entsminger, about what the shortage means.

(John Entsminger) The reality of the situation is the hydrology on the Colorado River over the last 20 years, and this year in particular is not good, so it is a serious situation at the basin scale.

However, here in Southern Nevada, we've been preparing for this situation for the last 20 years, so we do have the tools in place to ensure a safe and reliable water supply for the residents here in Southern Nevada.

-We hear a lot about acre feet, and our allocation on the river is 300,000 acre feet.

For one thing, how many households or how many residents does an acre foot serve here in Southern Nevada?

-One acre foot will take care of about three households for one year.

-So if we do the math on that 300,000 acre feet, that's about 900,000 households.

We have about 1.2 million roughly households right now, and we're projected to grow 30%.

How does the math match up if we've got that allocation but so much more usage?

-Well, because one thing you're talking about is what you're delivering to the house isn't what's depleted from the river, right?

So because we sit on the shore of Lake Mead, everything that hits a drain in Southern Nevada is treated and put back into the lake, and you can take that amount of water back out again.

So while we don't have a large water supply, what we do have is a geographic advantage in terms of sitting upstream of Hoover Dam.

-Anyone looking to buy or sell a home in Las Vegas this year knows that prices are high.

Southern Nevada shattered home price records month after month.

In November the median price of a home was $420,000, which is 21% higher than the year before.

Well, in July we talked to a panel of experts about why housing prices were skyrocketing.

(Brandon Roberts) It is crazy, it is a hot market.

I mean, you can call it however you want.

It's on fire.

But the biggest thing is there's not enough to supply.

The demand is there.

I think we're short on homes that have been built over the past 10 years, so it's just prices driving up because of the supply and demand.

-Nat, let's talk a little about that.

Is this just a "demand overpowering supply" type of conversation, and why don't we have the supply on hand right now?

(Nat Hodgson) So to talk new, separated from resale, we're building as many homes as we possibly can, you know.

Before COVID and everything hit us, our labor was the number-one issue.

That's still there, it still exists today, and actually probably more so than it did before because people are retiring, right?

So we're building as many as we can.

I don't see in the near future, I'm talking a few years out, where we're going to be able to hit the supply for the demand that's out there.

You know, if you're wanting to sell, that's good news, right?

You have an endless supply of buyers there.

But the sad part is, and you touched on it, it's pricing out Nevadans.

Yes, we are.

New homes, it's a simple arithmetic problem.

It's all the costs added together is your sales price.

And, you know, as soon as both-- I'm sure we'll talk about it later-- but just getting material has been an issue.

So again, I don't see the supply meeting demand for a while.

-John, let's talk more broadly about our economic condition right now.

Is the hot housing market-- and let's maybe go back and talk a little bit about some of our national indicators.

We are seeing economic growth.

We're seeing a lot more jobs added at month end.

Those are really great indicators.

Let's talk about locally.

Is the hot housing market then reflective of a strong and recovering economy here?

(John Restrepo) Yes, yes.

The question is what's driving the-- what's the main driver?

You know, obviously the main driver going back to what you mentioned earlier about the Great Recession in 2008, one thing the feds and the Congress have learned from the last time was the stimulus wasn't big enough.

Remember the last time it was $700 million, and we thought that was a lot.

We're in the trillions of dollars now because they knew that if they didn't pump a lot of money into the system, either through Congressional action or through monetary policy-- there's fiscal policy and monetary policy-- we would drag out this recovery like we did in the Great Recession.

They didn't want that to happen.

One of the downsides of that is potential inflation, you know.

So the other part that came into play, once we shut things down here and across the world, people couldn't go work in factories in China that provide our steel and our, you know, plywood or two-by-fours, whatever it is, or appliances, so the supply chain started shutting down in terms of workers at the same time as people were staying home because everything was shut down.

You know, Americans, one thing we're not going to do is save money.

So we're not spending at restaurants and casinos, what do we do?

We buy stuff on Amazon.

And so the supply chain from China and containers and ships got all clogged up with a variety of factors in place and it caused a huge drive-up in the price of housing.

Usually it's material costs and the labor costs because a lot of folks left the construction industry and after the Great Recession didn't come back.

So you have this confluence of events, but it's all driven by the impact of the virus, of the pandemic.

-In August the Las Vegas Global Economic Alliance, or LVGEA, released its annual Las Vegas Perspective, a treasure trove of information about the region and the people who live here.

Now, this report is a way to bring businesses here, but also a way to look at where the city is headed.

We talked to Jared Smith from LVGEA and economist Jeremy Aguero about it.

Jared, I want to get your perspective too.

Let's talk about the business community.

How much caution are you seeing in a new business, a business that's maybe trying to relocate here?

Are they looking at things like where relief is and maybe where that cutoff is going to be?

(Jared Smith) So Kipp, it really depends on the industry.

You know, certainly there's caution in tourism obviously, health concerns, but you would be surprised to know that over 60% of our business development pipeline is in manufacturing and logistics.

So this is really a field of dreams, "build it and they will come" moment for us.

So we've been talking about economic diversification as something that's critical for the future of this city.

Now economic diversification is seeking us, which is different, and we talked about these billions of federal dollars that are coming down to Nevada and to our municipalities here.

We're leading a grant fund with an EDA grant request, and the issue is what can we do with those federal dollars to pivot our community and have our workers ready for the economic diversification that's seeking us?

So this community in my mind is not holding back.

Again, granted there are certain industries that, you know, are still hesitant, but I mean, last year was bad.

I mean, we know it.

There's no doubt about it.

Our results in business development show that a lot of projects got put on hold, but there is good news here.

I started saying this in social media and I'll say it again, this is going to be one of the biggest-- if not the biggest-- year in economic development, jobs-assisted results that I've ever seen in the five years that I've been here and in my career.

So there's a good story here.

-Jeremy, let's get your perspective on that too.

Do you share that same outlook given-- because of where relief is ending as you said kind of coming to an end in the fall?

I mean, are we looking this good?

-You know, there's no doubt that I do, and I think a great deal of credit goes to LVGEA and their member businesses that sort of drive that forward, right?

Modern thought with regard to economic development is not that you abandon the industries that got you where you are, but you seek out multiple specializations.

We can't just be good at one thing, we need to be good at a lot of things, and the best economic development strategy that we have is to make sure that businesses like mine and that operations like this and all those other businesses that are here have the greatest opportunity to succeed.

Because what Jared just talked about is businesses seeking us out, and we're not just seeing the businesses seek us out, we're also seeing employees seek us out.

Population growth continues to be relatively strong.

Yes, our unemployment rate is elevated, there's no doubt about that, as our hospitality industry continues to come back, as do other industries, but we're creating jobs in almost every sector of our economy.

And as a matter of fact, Las Vegas was number one among the top 30 metropolitan areas in the country in terms of job formation in just the past 12 months.

That is exactly what Jared is talking about.

These are businesses that are choosing us, and employees that are choosing to have a better opportunity at their dream by coming here.

-2021 had another important milestone, the return of people to live events and for the first time ever, fans were allowed into the newly built Allegiant Stadium to see the Las Vegas Raiders play.

The Nevada Week team looked at why Las Vegas is becoming a sports city.

Touchdown Raiders!

-One for three, how about that!

Las Vegas is going all in on professional sports.

With new arenas and new franchises, the city's tourism leaders are suddenly touting Las Vegas as the "Greatest Arena on Earth."

But why now?

What's attracting professional sports teams to Las Vegas?

(Nancy Lough) The changing of the legal landscape with regard to sport betting is what opened up Las Vegas for sport business.

The gambling issue was a major issue that was keeping pretty much every commissioner of any major sport from considering Las Vegas as a viable market.

Your Las Vegas Raiders!

The other big factor that drew like the Raiders here is the public/private partnership.

Sports franchises, the private entities, seek incentives which they're finding in Las Vegas.

We created a tax structure that added a little bit to the room nights, and that tax goes directly towards paying for that beautiful new facility that we get to call home here, the Allegiant Stadium.

In addition to all the other factors attracting professional sports to Las Vegas, there's always the lure of the city's tourism base.

More visitors means more fans, more money and more teams coming to the town in the future.

It's an exciting time to be in Las Vegas.

There's more professional sport teams on the horizon; a great example, we already have two major ownership entities who are competing for the name of the new MLS team coming to town.

Both entities have already gone through the process of trademarking the name of Las Vegas' proposed Major League Soccer team, a sign things are serious.

But you also know right now, the Oakland A's have been to Las Vegas multiple visits-- I don't know if we're on six or seven at this point-- they're very, very serious about relocating to Las Vegas; probably even more likely than both of those is an NBA franchise.

And Las Vegas is actively preparing for the influx of professional sports and all that comes with them.

That preparation includes a ready workforce.

The University of Nevada Las Vegas is paving the way.

We have offerings at the academic level that are going to prepare these people to work in all of these franchises, all of these events, the management of these new facilities.

Las Vegas is world-famous for its gaming, lodging, entertainment and culinary offerings.

Soon the Entertainment Capital of the World may also be known as "Sports City."

For Nevada Week, I'm Heather Caputo.

September saw another big return, the return of conventions to Las Vegas.

The Global Gaming Expo, or G2E as it's better known, allowed gaming industry giants to come back to the city and show off their latest technology.

Of course, we checked it out.

Welcome.

It's a little bit self-explanatory where we are.

We are on the expo floor of G2E.

I've got Howard Stutz with me from the Nevada Indie, and I've got Brian Horwath from the Las Vegas Sun.

Thank you so much both for being here; we really appreciate it.

Let's talk, and Howard, let's start with you.

The vibe here.

I mean, let's not forget last year we had a virtual, now we're back in person.

I mean, do you feel a little more excitement than usual here?

(Howard Stutz) What I've seen is it looks-- it's not as many people, obviously.

There's not going to be 27,000 when they come up with the final numbers, and I'm just noticing, it looks like the booths are a lot smaller, and there's a lot more space.

I mean, we're standing in a spot that probably would have been a booth last year, you know, last year or probably was in 2019.

But the vibe is here because people are excited to be back, and I think the comment that Bill Miller made to me about a week ago, he said a smaller G2E is going to be a more effective G2E, so they think they're going to get a lot of buyers.

Remember, they haven't been able to do this.

They haven't been able to go and test these machines and look at the products, look at the different systems and they're able to do that now, and I think that's where the excitement is.

But it is a much smaller show right now, and that's to be expected.

I mean, we're wearing masks.

You know, they went through this whole vaccine protocol to get in.

Not surprising, but yeah, the excitement is there, Kipp.

I really think so.

-We should bring attention to there's no international companies here as well.

That's a big difference too, correct?

-A big difference, yes.

They usually would have had-- the attendance of the international delegation, there's no direct flights to Las Vegas.

You got to jump through a bunch of hoops and hurdles I guess for international travelers to get here, so hopefully that will all get cleared up by next year.

But yes, that's what's really kind of-- the numbers are down, but it still looks like-- you know, the first day it looks exciting.

We'll see how the week goes, the next couple days go.

-Bryan, and also G2E, they marketed it this year as quote, "Reunite and Energize."

I mean, this really is the first time where the gaming industry has been able to get together, and let's not forget the tough year that 2020 was.

I mean, is this the first time really where we're seeing the whole gaming industry together since the pandemic?

(Bryan Horwath) Yes.

Really it's been about two years, and it's interesting.

I was waiting outside for the show floor to open this morning and, you know, there's people-- you could just hear people reconnecting and they haven't seen each other for, you know, basically two years or so.

You know, this is an industry where people know each other like probably most industries, but I think it's kind of a close-knit industry.

And I think, you know, what Howard said really rings true.

I mean, people are excited to be here.

It's definitely a bit toned down than it would be in a normal year, whatever normal is right now.

But I think people are excited to be here, and I think this type of thing is what obviously Las Vegas wants to get back to.

We want to get back to having conventions, and this is one that certainly, you know, the city is excited about.

-As we've already talked about, Las Vegas is known for gaming and entertainment and now sports.

But it is also the wedding capital of the world, and after a year of cancellations and postponements, couples filled wedding chapels to say "I do."

One summer afternoon, the Nevada Week team went to a wedding chapel to check out what the boom in weddings means.

Weddings are back in Las Vegas.

"Please give your gorgeous wife a kiss."

(cheers and applause) New Yorkers Crystal and Gavin Foster picked Las Vegas as their wedding spot.

Honestly, I chose it; he didn't have a choice.

-It's the wedding capital of the world.

How could you go wrong?

A few friends and family joined them to celebrate.

My cousin right there actually booked her flight the day before.

They just came out to support us.

Thank you, guys.

2021 is a much different year for weddings than last year.

Like just about everything else, 2020 was tough for wedding venues and vendors.

With limits on capacity and concerns about COVID-19, many couples either put off their nuptials or got married but moved their party to this year.

(Kristina Banks) It's been really fun because we're just seeing all the brand-new couples who have quarantined together.

So they're still really fresh, but they've gone through so much already.

We're seeing a lot of like mature couples who are still very new to each other, but the way that they've experienced each other and the world is a totally different new perspective.

So it's really fun to get them married and hear their stories.

Kristina Banks is a wedding planner for Vegas Weddings in Downtown Las Vegas.

She spent 2020 figuring out options for couples in a world dominated by the pandemic.

Obviously there's high stress situations, but at the end of the day, you tell us what you need.

We're full service.

We're going to make it happen.

Now that the domestic wedding biz has mostly returned to normal, Banks is getting ready for a tidal wave of international clients who are standing by for border restrictions to be lifted.

We're waiting for that day because there's a flood coming in.

As for the newlyweds Crystal and Gavin, their next stop is the post-wedding party.

Party Las Vegas style!

-Yeah!

(laughter) For Nevada Week, I'm Natalie Cullen.

Thank you as always for joining us this week on Nevada Week.

Now, to see those discussions in their entirety and a lot more, go to vegaspbs.org/nevadaweek.

You can also follow us on Facebook and Twitter at @nevadaweek.

Thanks for joining us.

Have a safe and happy holiday season, and of course we look forward to exploring more important topics with you in 2022.

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