West Wendover saw a slight increase in the number of local businesses operating in town this year but a steep drop in the number of non-local firms more than offset any gains according to the annual business license report.
According to City Clerk Anna Bartlome there are a total of 171 businesses in West Wendover, 100 of which are local and 71 non-local. That is a 5.00 percent drop from last year total of 180. It is the lowest number of businesses ever recorded for West Wendover since even before incorporation in 1991.
In July 2010 there were 93 local business and 87 non-local.
Local businesses are defined by companies that have a physical presence in West Wendover and include everything from home based businesses run part time to apartment complexes and casinos.
“If there is an office or a building or a physical address in West Wendover it is counted as a local business,” Bartlome said. “Even if the owner or the corporate offices are located out of town. Non local business are like the Schwanns food that come to town but have no office.”
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In 2007 the city changed its criteria of what constituted a “local” business. Under the new criteria some businesses are considered local if they have a West Wendover address even if they are in fact owned by nonresident individuals or corporations.
All five of Wendover Casinos are considered local in the city’s new count even though their corporate headquarters are not located in Wendover. The same is true for West Wendover apartment complexes and for most of the fast food franchises.
Excluding those business from the list the number of locally owned and operated businesses falls below 60 in West Wendover an embarrassingly small number for a city with a population of about 5,000.
The dearth of private enterprise is most acute in the retail industry which apart from Smith’s Food Store is virtually nonexistent in West Wendover.
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Purchases as simple as a computer printer ink, a telephone or even a coffee maker available literally in a half a dozen locations in communities of similar or even smaller sizes as Wendover, often necessitate a 240 mile round trip to Salt Lake City to the east or Elko to the west.
In the past five years West Wendover has seen a number of relatively large retailers also leave town such as Park Furniture, Bargain Barn Serendipity and Blanchard’s Furniture. Two years ago it saw the closure of one of its two full service banks, Nevada Bank and Trust. This year the closures spread to entertainment with the closure of the only non-casino restaurant and a night club.
While generally depressing there are some signs of green shoots. A clothing store and a discount general goods store open where the video store once operated.
Nine years ago that West Wendover earned the title of Nevada’s fastest growing city by more than doubling its population from over 2,000 when the city incorporated in 1991 to well over 4,000 in 2001.
In addition to an almost exponential increase in single family homes West Wendover saw three new apartment complexes and three new mobile homes parks built in less than ten years.
Small retailers also flourished.
But at its peak in 2001 the boom began to bust. Facing financial disaster the StateLine Casino Corporation began to pare down its work force and unknown to many of its employees began to cut payments to the company’s health insurer.
The crisis reach its peak in 2002 when the company declared bankruptcy and was later sold at auction. Hundreds of jobs were lost and even workers who retained employment found their life savings wiped out by medical bills they thought they were insured for but were not.
But while the StateLine bankruptcy can explain the beginning of the bust the stagnation that followed cannot be put on the shoulders of a company that has not existed for eight years.
Instead Wendover’s economic stagnation is probably due to a combination of factors some within and some outside of the city’s control.
Small retailers and home based business owners have frequently complained about West Wendover’s over regulation of private enterprise that borders to the point of harassment.
From the color of paint to a building to exactly what merchandize a store may sell often becomes an item on the city council’s agenda. The city recently approved a requirement for prospective business owners to submit for finger prints as part of its back ground check.
“I would love to see the city council loosen up or rescind some of the restrictions on business,” said West Wendover Mayor Donnie Anderson last year . “But this current council has so far been unwilling.”
Anderson who won a landslide victory in 2008 in part on that plat form but has been stymied on almost every occasion by the hold over city council.
Just last year the new mayor strongly endorsed developer Steve Weinstein’s request that the city allow his project- the Rusty Palms to apply for a class one casino license without having to build a 150 room hotel.
The council put in a 150 room hotel room minimum the year before at the behest of the Peppermill.
Then Weinstein asked the council to either rescind the ordinance or at least extend the time between the construction of the casino property and the construction of the 150 room hotel. Weinstein explained that because of the national recession his anchor tenant had to withdraw from the venture and that no replacement business could be found.
“I think Mr. Weinstein came more than halfway,” Anderson said in a telephone interview at the time. “All he wanted was time so he could phase in the hotel rooms. He said he was willing to pay the room taxes even if he didn’t have the rooms. That adds up to $250,000 a year to the city. Double that because those people are going to have to stay somewhere else so the city would have gotten two room taxes.”
Despite the economic windfall Weinstein was beaten before the meeting even began.
With the Peppermill corporation employing four of the five current councilmen Weinstein request was shot down in flames not once but twice in two consecutive meetings.
The four Peppermill councilmen were later fined by the state ethics board but their votes were allowed to stand even after they admitted in depositions that they were specifically told by their superiors in private meetings before the vote their company did not want the ordinance rescinded and that no compromise was acceptable.
The vote did have its desired effect, despite completing the entire building Weinstein was forced to abandon the Rusty Palms last month. It now sits empty just north of I-80.
West Wendover loss of business appear to be Wendover, Utah’s gain in just three years the city on the other side of the state border has increased its business license roll by over 100 to 273 according to City Clerk Tamara Weyland.
“Most are small businesses or home based,” Weyland said last year.
