| Photo by Ken Lund |
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| If your best attraction is a roller coaster, maybe you need to get creative. |
By Robert L. Candiotti May 28, 2009
I was already working in Primm - and was somewhat familiar with it and its surroundings - when I first read about the proposed
Ivanpah Valley Airport. Knowledge of Ivanpah Valley Airport provided me with a template to lay over the entertaining, but
rather unremarkable, condition of Primm as it exists today. The template lets me peer
into the future. It enables me to see Primm differently than most people. It is a template that inspires imagination.
This Template of Tomorrow includes Ivanpah Valley Airport, a Nevada-California Maglev
train, vastly more imaginative casinos, a more engaging outlet shopping mall, a ground transportation center that
connects tourists to many popular places in the general region of the Southwest and Southern California.
| Photo by mastermaq |
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| Who's Your City? This book got me thinking even more than usual about Primm and Ivanpah. |
I recently read a book by Richard Florida called Who's Your City? It is about the importance
of place of residence as a primary factor in people's happiness. Going back and forth on the bus between Las Vegas and Primm,
I passed the time reading Who's Your City? Perhaps oddly, though it is a
fairly nondescript spot in an unimpressive desert, Who's Your City? got me to thinking even more deeply than
normal about Primm. Primm will never be a great or important city. But, every
single day of the year, thousands (no exaggeration) of travelers - mostly automobile motorists - stop at Primm.
They stop for gas, they stop for food, they stop to gamble or get a room, or both, they stop for the roller coaster, they
stop out of curiosity, they stop to stretch their legs, to let the dog out of the car, to shop at Fashion Outlets
mall, to get directions to Las Vegas, to buy lottery tickets on the California side of the border.
I enjoy what Primm is. It's cool and it's corny. Some great people work out there. Lots of young people in their twenties
have been working in Primm continuously for years. I respect many of them for their tenacity and their work ethic (believe
me, going back and forth between Las Vegas and Primm several days a week is not easy).
They have qualities that I like. One quality that belies their youthfulness is being surprisingly sophisticated.
They have good speaking skills. They can be impressive and charming communicators. Perhaps this is because
hundreds of European, Canadian and Asian tourists find their way to Primm every day, and there are daily visitors from Mexico
and other countries to the south. Ladies from India in saris and from the Middle East with head scarves are often seen. There
is also a constant parade of American tourists who reside in the U.S. from coast to coast.
Primm workers have to interact with all these travelers. It can be enriching for
both sides.
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| I enjoy what Primm is. It's cool and it's corny. |
To me, Primm has an Old West kind
of feeling. It is relaxed and refreshingly fun. As I have written on the "Primm 2018" page in GreenAirport.net (www.greenairport.net/id10.html), Primm assuredly has the 24/7 excitement of being right on the desert border of the Golden State of California and
the Silver State of Nevada.
Primm is the major midpoint between Las Vegas and Southern California. For hundreds - and perhaps thousands
- of years, people have been attracted to the geography today known as Primm as a stopover and relaxation spot. The
area naturally feels like a place to pause and rest up. Heading north, leaving California, after descending for dozens of miles, Primm
is the first flat land you come to. Heading south, leaving Nevada and approaching the long ascent into California, Primm beckons
as a place to get refreshed and reorganized before the long drive southward to the next bit of tangible civilization. Yes, even in these "modern times"
of the 21st Century, when you're motoring south on the venerable I-15 from Nevada into California, between Primm
and Victorville you're pretty much in the middle of nowhere. The glittering exception is probably The Mad Greek
restaurant in Baker, which is about an hour south of Primm.
I have been
entertaining myself with a play on words. Who's Your City? became Who's Your Middie? (i.e. midpoint). Primm is a pretty popular middie
today, but it is nothing compared to what kind of middie it can be.
| Photo by Echo 29 taken just to the north of Primm |
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| Look close! Can you see what I see? A new international airport, Maglev train, driverless vehicles. |
The daily traffic between Southern California and Southern Nevada is ceaselessly formidable. There
are countless human connections of many types - business, family, romance, sex, recreation, music and entertainment, gaming,
looking for something, running from something, taking a leak, taking a chance, taking a powder - between Southern Nevada and
Southern California. Every type of vehicle, and many different kinds of people, are going back and forth.
Many stop at Primm. I enjoy seeing them and being around them.
Yet, I still look far ahead to what Primm can be. Primm is not only where I work. It is also where I fantasize. I fantasize about Primm having the United States' newest international airport, Ivanpah Valley Airport,
and being a world-class train stop along the route of a 300 mile-per-hour Maglev. I fantasize about Primm delivering higher
quality excitement on the Nevada-California border along I-15.
In my fantasies, looking ahead 10 years, Primm can be so much more successful - and more creative - than it
is today.
In Who's Your City?, there
are some interesting quotes by Stanford University economist Paul Romer. "Economic growth occurs whenever people take
resources and rearrange them in ways that are more valuable," said Romer. He uses as a metaphor for enhanced productivity
the combination of food ingredients in a recipe. Doing a recipe, when solitary ingredients are combined, something totally
new and delicious can be created.
For the Primm "casserole," I think about many ingredients that could be mixed together to make an appealing "dish":
its geographic location at the Nevada-California border, its long history as a stopover point, the proposed Ivanpah Valley
Airport, the long-considered California-Nevada Maglev train, Primm's reputation as a venue for famous and accomplished
entertainers who are touring on the road, car and motorcycle races that are staged at Primm, its proximity to many other
tourist attractions. In Who's
Your City?, author Richard Florida talks about how the creative class in the U.S. is growing significantly. Florida states
that "the creative sector has experienced tremendous growth over the last century." He says the creative class made
up five percent of all employment in 1900, but, presently, "nearly 40 million Americans hold jobs in the creative sector." I fantasize about Primm embracing creativity, blooming with
creative guidance, and then reflecting creativity.
Also in Who's Your City?, Florida talks about the importance of aesthetics. I think the success of tomorrow's Primm
is in its absorption and development of aesthetics. However, these cannot be aesthetics that emulate Las Vegas. Las Vegas has its own thing going, and, as a
resident of that unique city for the past 10 years, I can state with conviction Las Vegas is an extraordinary
place. Yet, Primm absolutely cannot copy Las Vegas. Primm
has its own personality, its own history, its own reality, its own geography, its own destiny. O.K. I admit it. I spend a lot of time peering into the Template of
Tomorrow that I place over Primm. What I envision for Ivanpah Valley constitutes a vast change of just about everything, including
Primm, Jean and Goodsprings, Nevada, Las Vegas connectivity, an additional international airport, dynamics
between San Bernardino and Riverside counties in California and Clark County in Southern Nevada. But I am not merely dreaming. There truly is Environmental Impact Statement
preparation going on right now, overseen by the United States government's Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and Bureau
of Land Management (BLM). The report should be completed, and a decision on construction of the new airport made, by the end
of 2010. Monumental changes at
the Nevada-California border along Interstate 15 really are possible and are stimulating to reflect upon. I see all this and more when I look through the Template of Tomorrow.
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