Mesquite Falling Behind

I made a trip to St. George this week, something I am loathe to do. 

While visiting our nearest neighbor, I was struck by something that bothered me. 

At the doctor's office my wife was visiting, I noticed that another office building was being built in the complex off Riverside Road.  As we traveled around the Utah city, I noticed other construction projects in full swing.

Also, on the way to that office, we went through a construction gauntlet on the interstate.  They were building another overpass between exits 4 and 6, and widening I-15. 

The rest of the country is facing round two of the recession, but St. George is booming and thriving.

Obviously, as a Mesquitian, I am jealous.

I began to ponder what makes St. George continue to grow while my beloved hometown is dying before my eyes.

It's tough to figure out.

Both towns have identical climates, meaning extremely hot in the spring, blisteringly hot in the summer, brutally hot in the fall, and sometimes downright pleasant during the brief winter.

St. George and Mesquite have similar LDS roots and continued strong church influences.

Each is located right on the interstate.  Both have nice golf courses.

The differences?

Well, to be honest, Mesquite is in Nevada, which means no state income taxes, very friendly state tax structures for businesses, and a right-to-work state which means unions have trouble getting a toe hold (or another way of putting it, workers can be and are abused, grotesquely underpaid, kicked around, and spit on, and nobody steps up for them).

Mesquite is closer to Nevada's largest metropolitan center of Las Vegas than St. George is to Salt Lake, Utah's big city.

Mesquite is newer and fresher, with excellent infrastructure.  St. George is older, with more rundown areas and more low-income housing, and roads that need some help in places.

Mesquite is open 24 hours a day, with casinos, liberal liquor laws, and used to be focused on tourism.  St. George has some tourism, most of it revolving around their marathon and senior games, and welcomes visitors so long as they are in bed by 9 p.m.  They have one bar, one liquor store, and the beer they serve has an alcohol content of 3.2%.  I've had chocolate milk that had more kick to it.

But here are a few things in St. George's favor.

First, they have a shiny new airport.  The one they used to have was barely bigger than Mesquite's current muni plane place, but Utahns had enough vision 10 years ago to start the ball rolling on a bigger place.  Since then, they've added two interstate exits, several nearby commercial and residential projects, and opened up a whole new section of town.

I suspect Mesquite will start getting serious about an airport just about the time intercontinental space travel becomes the norm.

However, one of the biggest immediate differences is attitude toward business.

If you're a carpetbagger from somewhere else with big dreams, no money, and an attractive sales pitch, Mesquite is your destination.  For example, we rolled out the red carpet, sold land at fire sale prices, accepted post-dated checks, and heralded an unlikely amateur sports park that even little old Hurricane, Utah was too smart to bite into.

But if you're a small business owner, trying to open a store, introduce a new service, or build a little water park with batting cages and a paintball facility in Mesquite, forget it.  You'll see more hurdles than an Olympic decathlon sprinter.

A few months ago, I wrote a story that exemplified the problem.  A woman wanted to keep her used furniture store going, but the city insisted she complete an intrusive 13-page business license application that was the equivalent of a discount proctology exam.  Oh, and about $600 a year in license fees plus a one-time fee of $145.

To open the same store in St. George, it required a one-page application, and a $50 annual fee.

The Mesquite application process has been improved a little bit, but what hasn't gotten much better yet is the inherent anti-business attitude expressed by City Hall for years with high license fees and cumbersome application and approval processes.

Hopefully the new city council will fix some of this, particularly since the current lineup includes a mayor whose full time job is doing marketing and expanding services for the local phone company; a former casino executive; the head broker at an extremely successful real estate company; and a Mesquite native who owns several commercial properties and businesses.

Also, with the departure of Tim Hacker and Catherine Lorbeer, businesses should start feeling a little more warm and fuzzy when visiting City Hall.

Of course, we still need the Chamber of Commerce to step up and become as aggressive in recruiting and helping new businesses as they are in throwing drinking parties and going bowling.  Thankfully, the organization is worlds ahead of where it was two years ago, but it still needs a lot of work and some new vision in which "gaming" isn't a dirty word.  Someone also needs to give them a map that shows the world isn't flat beyond exits 120 and 122, and that it's okay to market and promote Mesquite beyond our borders.

Business is essential for a growing city, even if the community's number one cash crop is retirees.

One more thing:  when a business comes to town, we the people need to support it.  A skating rink is closing because nobody showed up, and the city wouldn't help rework a mostly-empty bus route out to the facility.  A certain resurrected restaurant on Mesquite Boulevard frequently serves less than a half-dozen people for lunch.  A longtime furniture store recently closed down because people would rather go to Las Vegas and St. George to save $50 on a living room set.  If we continue to take our money out of town, it won't be long before we won't have a town.

We don't want to be St. George, any more than we want to be Las Vegas.  But when other areas are thriving and recovering while Mesquite continues to die a slow death, it's time to wake up, look around, figure out what's wrong, and start the hard work of fixing it.