Black List to Host Inaugural Screenwriters Lab in Las Vegas

The Black List announced that it will host the inaugural Black List Screenwriters Lab from Sept. 30 to Oct. 5 in Las Vegas.

Six writers will be invited to the weeklong, all-expenses-paid screenwriting workshop, where they will work alongside four “mentors,” or screenwriting veterans. Confirmed mentors include Billy Ray (The Hunger Games, Captain Phillips), Kiwi Smith (Legally Blonde, Expendabelles) and Scott Myers, host and founder of the Black List blog Go Into the Story.

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“There’s a lot to be excited about here," Black List founder and CEO Franklin Leonard said. “Six writers are going to have the opportunity to workshop their script at an extremely high level and get an education on working as a professional screenwriter from our extraordinary mentors and guests we’ll invite throughout the week.”

The Las Vegas Downtown Project, founded by Zappos.com CEO Tony Hsieh, will host the mentors and writers as part of an initiative to cultivate a writing culture and community in Las Vegas called Writing Downtown.

Initially, 15 merited writers will be invited to submit a one-page personal statement. Lab mentors and the Black List will then choose six from the group to participate. Writers can opt to be considered by uploading a screenplay on or before July 31 and confirming they have never earned more than $25,000 for their film or television writing.

Leonard added, “For us, Sept. 30 can’t come soon enough.”

Critic’s Notebook: Latest Vision for Las Vegas: A Downtown Vibe

Isaac Brekken for The New York TimesTony Hsieh, the chief executive of Zappos, in Henderson, Nev. Mr. Hsieh is determined to revitalize downtown Las Vegas.

LAS VEGAS — Tony Hsieh didn’t look much like a modern-day Bugsy Siegel. Wearing backpack, T-shirt and jeans, standing outside a downtown bar, he patrolled his future empire along East Fremont Street here one sweltering morning.

A sortable calendar of noteworthy cultural events in the New York region, selected by Times critics.

But the flamboyant Siegel changed this city for good when he built the Flamingo Hotel, the first luxury casino on the Strip. Now Mr. Hsieh, a soft-spoken 39-year-old Internet billionaire who runs Zappos, the online clothing store, plans to do something as transformative. It’s a classic American dream: a Western-scale roll of the dice in a city that suddenly conjured up Belle Époque Paris and ancient Rome out of the desert. The idea this time is to build a version of the Mission district in San Francisco or the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn in downtown Vegas.

Mr. Hsieh (pronounced shay) is relocating Zappos headquarters from Henderson, Nev., about 16 miles away, and investing hundreds of millions of his own dollars to retrofit downtown with, well, a downtown, in line with the latest trends.

I came to check out the progress. There’s not much to see yet, but his $350 million Downtown Project — a mix of investments, acquisitions and loans — envisions blocks and blocks of community-based, pedestrian-friendly, small-business-oriented, high-density, high-tech urbanism in long-depressed and troubled neighborhoods. Zappos will take over the decrepit old City Hall. That gesture alone, salvaging a local landmark, has endeared Mr. Hsieh to many in Las Vegas.

We spoke briefly the other night in the Gold Spike, a former casino near City Hall whose gambling room he stripped and converted into a chic slots-free bar and chill space. He took me to the empty motel he bought next-door, where, he speculated, a modeling agency and photography studio could take over what used to be a few of the poolside guest rooms.

On nearby blocks, which he has also gobbled up, the Downtown Project would seed tech start-ups, boutiques, mom-and-pop restaurants and bars; the world’s largest Airstream trailer park; a playground and geodesic dome; a complex of recording studios; a charter school; a doggy day care; a bike share program, even a Tesla electric car share, along with theaters for TED Talk-like lecturers and music festivals.

There’s no designer-led master plan, no single billion-dollar construction project, no star architect. The concept is top-down but preaches piecemeal, bottom-up development and reuse. It exploits a picturesque supply of abandoned flop houses, vacant offices and collapsing warehouses, capitalizing on a growing desire among young Americans for urban life: an anti-Strip vision of America.

Out on the Strip, MGM opened CityCenter in 2009, a $7.8 billion luxury development and celebrity-architect petting zoo, which in a sense is the same concept, but pegged as a theme park for tourists. I got a peek the other day. It’s a smart and sleek attraction; business has been improving. CityCenter and the Downtown Project are both visions for evolving the same city.

But unlike MGM’s development, which opened in the midst of the housing collapse, Mr. Hsieh’s timing could hardly have been better. The local economy, devastated when the bubble burst, is limping back. The population (increasingly young Asians and Hispanics) keeps rising, and wealthy out-of-towners prop up the high end of the housing market. Most properties are still under water, and the city is down 100,000 construction jobs from pre-recession highs, but the picture isn’t as bleak, or straightforward, as four years ago.

At the same time, Las Vegas suffers the pitfalls of being a one-industry town. Baked into its economy are minimal taxes and a state government inclined to ship much of what Las Vegas contributes to the rest of Nevada, which, among other consequences, insures the school system is perennially poor. Casino moguls, needing a steady supply of parking attendants, hotel maids and blackjack dealers, not college-educated workers, were once fine with that. But times are changing. Now the lack of good public schools and downtown amenities — demanded by those mobile and educated young Americans other cities are competing to attract — has become a liability.


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Highs Of 117 Expected In Las Vegas, In Dangerous Heat Wave

Excessive heat warnings will continue for much of the Desert Southwest through Monday. Here, Maria Wieser of Italy drinks water while sightseeing in Death Valley National Park on Friday.

A heat wave is broiling America's Southwest, where temperatures are expected to soar past 110 degrees in coming days. Before noon on Friday, temperatures in many parts of southeastern California, Nevada and Arizona had already topped 100 degrees.

An "excessive heat warning" was issued Friday by the National Weather Service, which blames the dangerously high temperatures on "a massive area of high pressure across the Western United States through Monday."

The agency is urging people to help keep children, the elderly and those with chronic ailments safe during the heat wave, and it reminds anyone who experiences nausea, headaches or dizziness to cool down and drink water.

Citing high temperatures of between 114-117 degrees in Las Vegas, from 118-125 in the Colorado River Valley, and 126-129 in Death Valley, the weather service said that in some areas, nightly lows may not drop below 90 degrees.

It remains to be seen whether the heat will threaten the record set in Death Valley, of 134 degrees, back in 1913.

The thermometer at the Furnace Creek resort in Death Valley National Park hit 120 degrees before noon Friday.

The perilous heat led the NWS to remind us that in 2005, "17 people died from heat-related causes in the Las Vegas Valley ... when temperatures were observed at or above 112" from July 14 to 17.

In New Mexico, the farmers and residents of Mora County are enduring a severe drought that's worsened by the heat. A local river stands dry, with cracks showing in its bed, reports member station KUNM from Albuquerque.

Last month, Mora became the first county to ban fracking, out of concern that the process would pollute its wells and aquifers, sources of water that it is now counting on, KUNM reports.

And the heat is also taking a toll in the desert areas that some immigrants use to cross the U.S.-Mexico border illegally. That's the story from Arizona, where our colleagues at the Fronteras blog report that more than 100 bodies have already been found in Arizona's deserts in 2013.

U.S. Border Patrol trauma agents have also rescued nearly 200 people, writes Fronteras' Michel Marizco. In most cases, the people called 911 after realizing they were in danger.

Real Estate Sizzles Again In Las Vegas

Las Vegas, the recession's foreclosure capital, is seeing a surge in single-family home prices.

High-paying investors have helped Las Vegas' real estate prices to bloom in a place that once ranked as the country's foreclosure capital.

Thanks to these big-money investors as well as a shortage of supply, single-family home prices in Vegas have increased an average of 32.8 percent from a year ago, according to the Greater Las Vegas Association of Realtors.

The housing market is so tight that Realtors are calling people to try to get them to sell their homes. Agents are always trying to find homes to sell, but right now in Vegas, it's taken on a new fervor.

"Right now, on average, an average listing we have we can say there's no less than 15 offers on a property that we have," says Noah Herrera, vice president of the Greater Las Vegas Association of Realtors.

A normal, healthy housing supply in Las Vegas has enough homes to meet a six-month demand, Herrera says. Right now, Vegas has barely enough for five weeks. One reason, he says, is an influx of big-money investors — Wall Street and hedge funds — who are buying up properties in bulk.

"We have institutional investors that are coming in and taking all of our inventory — overbidding, paying cash," Herrera says.

Another big reason, he says, is a local law that did what other federal laws did nationally after the housing market crash: It made it harder for banks to foreclose. It did that by making mortgage and foreclosure practices more transparent. It also ended things like robo-calling and predatory lending.

"Well, it is a bill that's meant to protect homeowners," says Luis Lopez, an analyst at the Lied Institute for Real Estate Studies in Las Vegas. "To me it makes sense that banks have to show the homeowner that they have the authority to foreclose. It just seems something very basic."

“ We have institutional investors that are coming in and taking all of our inventory — overbidding, paying cash.
- Noah Herrera, Greater Las Vegas Association of Realtors

'The Craziness Is Escalating In Las Vegas'

And many local Realtors say it worked, slowing down foreclosures. In September 2011, there were over 4,000 notices of default in the state of Nevada. In October, after the bill passed, there were 80. And fewer homes in foreclosure mean fewer homes being pushed to the market. And the result is Economics 101: Limited supply plus high demand equals higher prices.

But that may not be a bad thing.

"Because the values have gone up so much, it's now causing normal people that were underwater to be able to sell their houses," says Herrera.

And the number of people who are underwater in Nevada — or who owe more on their house than it's currently worth — is a lot. In 2010, it was 70 percent of mortgage owners. Today, it's less than 50 percent.

Clara Padilla Silver is part of that statistic. According to an appraisal, she was underwater $35,000 on her Las Vegas home.

"And we didn't qualify for any kind of modification," Silver says.

Her only option, she thought, was to do a short sale — to sell the house for less than it is worth — even if it damaged her credit. That's what her neighbor was doing.

But then Silver thought about it. "The craziness is escalating in Las Vegas. So I said, 'Let's take a chance. We'll list it for a couple of weeks,' " she says.

And wham!

"We got a cash offer for $233,000" — $50,000 over what she thought the house was worth, she says.

That deal fell through, but a week later, she got a similar offer, one that she expects to close in the next few weeks. But it better happen fast — for the buyers, she says, because when she checks online real estate databases "the value of my house increases by about $1,000 every two days."

That, she says, is the craziness of Vegas.