West Wendover experienced a one gain of two new businesses this year reported City Clerk Anna Bartlome.
“There are currently 174 business renewed, 7 that closed and 8 not renewed as of today. The local businesses are 103, non-local 71,” Bartlome wore in a Tuesday e-mail.
The same time last year the number of West Wendover businesses fell to one of the lowest levels ever according to Bartlome.
From 190 business licenses recorded in 2012 there were 172 at the start of the last fiscal year. Most of the then decline came from ‘non-local’ businesses which do not have a physical presence in the city. According to Bartlome there were 80 such companies at the start of the last fiscal year. As of July 30th 2013 there were just 67.
The number of local businesses also fell albeit not as steeply. From the 110 reported last year there are now 105.
In 2011 there were total of 171 businesses in West Wendover, 100 of which were local and 71 non-local.
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 last year. “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.”
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.
With a population less than half of West Wendover, Wendover, Utah boasts about 180 business including 110 locally owned or operated said City Clerk Mariah Murphy.
120 miles to the south the city of Ely has about 300 businesses with a population about two thirds of West Wendover.
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.
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.
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.
A dozen 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 ten 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 merchandise a store may sell often becomes an item on the city council’s agenda. A year ago to increase the number of business West Wendover contracted with the University of Nevada Extension service to poll residents on the needs of the community.
The survey however repeatedly mentioned that West Wendover had no hardware store an assertion disputed by the fact that there was indeed a hardware store.
“Maybe it is because we are so hard to find,” said A&I Hardware owner Arbie Stone. “We are only a big building on Pueblo with a big sign that says ‘HARDWARE’.”
The fact that the city council not only accepted the original report but also lauded it with its glaring omissions only supported allegations that West Wendover city government is not interested in supporting local businesses.
That kind of over regulation may also explain why there is a relative plethora of small retail stores across the border in Wendover, Utah.
The economy on both sides of town should also begin to look up with the construction of the Long Canyon Gold Mine still scheduled to begin in early 2015.
Literally a mountain of gold ore lies in the once long over looked Pequop Range now in advanced exploration.
The mine has the potential to radically alter the economy and the lives of eastern Nevada, residents of Wendover and Wells. Estimated to need 500 workers during construction and 250 miners once operations are ready, the Long Canyon mine could add at least 1,000 people to the area and that may be just the tip of a gold boom in eastern Elko County.