THE LAS VEGAS Urban Chamber of Commerce recently engaged my firm to assist in re-designing their service focus for the future. The Chamber, as it is known is the Valley's oldest and most recognizable business advocacy organization serving the minority business community, Minority and Women Business Enterprise (MWBE). My opinions, and writings do not represent nor are they done in behalf of the Chamber. They are mine alone.

As a business advocacy organization, the Chamber is looking for ways and means to help its constituency to grow and develop their businesses. A healthy business community can produce jobs, which in turn produces disposable income, which circulates throughout the local economy, thus contributing to growth. It stands to reason that the healthier the minority business community, the healthier are the minority neighborhoods and other attributes of a community. There's one obvious market segment that can significantly contribute to the growth and development of minority businesses, and that's construction.

Construction in Las Vegas is bursting at the seams, with project after project springing up, and major corporations and developers from MGM, Station Casinos and Boyd Gaming to Donald Trump cashing in on the vibrant construction boom and growth of the market. With billions of dollars being devoted to these projects, Las Vegas has become a Mecca for contractors who are ready to cash in. It has been rumored that all of this activity can even produce over 50 thousand-plus jobs, and billions of dollars in construction related contracts—jobs and contracts that minorities and women should be lined up for and ready to participate in.

I have advocated for the corporations and developers to step up their supplier-diversity program initiatives and the need for minority- and women-owned companies to step up their efforts to gain capacity in order to take advantage of these opportunities. Has there been any measurable progress? It depends on whom you ask, and what you ask.

In Clark County, minorities, Blacks, Hispanics*, Asians, Native Americans, Hawaiians and Other Pacific Islanders) are at least 36% of the population. They represent much less than that in percentage of active businesses, employees, payroll and dollar value of goods and services sold, especially in construction and other corporate supply-chain activities.

History reveals for many reasons that it is unlikely that minority-owned companies will receive a representative percentage of contracts and jobs. Why? The answer is complex and daunting but there are a few obvious reasons that we'll discuss here (it will take a series of essays to get the full understanding on this subject, stay tuned).

What I mean by juice is that most Las Vegas-based minority contractors and suppliers, as well as minority and women suppliers in general lack the capacity: the size, capability financials and the connections, to capture significant business on these and other large projects. Since the realization of the enormous amount of construction-related work around town, there seems to be an eerie silence from both the developers and the minority business community, on how well minorities are participating in these opportunities.

With some of the major players releasing participation figures that seem to indicate levels of progress, to my knowledge none of these metrics can be substantiated nor is there any reliable third party that has validated the many claims of MWBE participation. What levels of participation are sufficient, how do they get measured and who is the validating authority? What is a fair percentage of business? Should we be shooting for entrepreneurial parity?

According to Ronald Langston, Director of the Commerce Department's Minority Business Development Agency (MBDA), entrepreneurial parity is defined as reaching proportionality between minority population percentage and percentage share of business development measures such as numbers of firms, gross receipts and employment.

For example, in the Las Vegas, Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA), Las Vegas, North Las Vegas, Henderson, Clark County etc. there are 3,823 black-owned companies, representing about 3% of the total businesses in the valley, and employing about 3,600 workers, The annual payroll for these black-owned companies is 93 million dollars, less than 1% of the total payroll for all valley companies. Using this group as an example, achieving entrepreneurial parity would produce a significant and momentous increase in the numbers across the board, the number of firms, the dollar amount of contracts and payroll and the number of jobs produced. This could be a staggering accomplishment but is it a realistic concept?

It is if the indications from the giant companies such as Perini are a signal of the willingness and seriousness of corporate owners to utilize minority- and women-owned firms. Perini CEO, Dick Rizzo recently spoke at the Urban Chamber's monthly luncheon and declared, "We have an unprecedented opportunity in Las Vegas for utilization of minority and women construction companies and suppliers for years to come, and we're going to do everything we can to locate them and put them to work."

He went on to report on the level of MWBE utilization at City Center and on other Perini Projects and his statistics indicate that even though he has included MWBEs in over $40 million of current work, he has a long way to go. City Center alone is reported to be a $7 billion-plus project and if the MWBE participation percentage theoretically was 5% (not an official MGM or Perini percentage goal) that would represent almost $400 million in MWBE contracts. If the goal were 10%, the result would be double.

The reality is that in order to get close to any of these participation figures, minority companies would have to be recruited at warp speed, and providing these companies even exist and had sufficient capacity. By the way, you will not find anywhere in America a CEO of a major corporation who tirelessly displays his seriousness in meeting MWBE participation goals for his clients, as Dick Rizzo. He's the only CEO that I know of who actively, consistently and personally shows up on the road at various events and minority advocacy activities, to look for and meet MWBE contractors.

How does the MWBE business community help themselves to the numerous opportunities and at the same time help major corporations, meet their participation goals? It's a complicated task but not insurmountable. It's a multi-faceted challenge that requires careful planning and execution of strategies and tactics to grow MWBE capacity and to get high-level corporate executives to buy-in, like at Perini, to serve up more than promises, and to ensure that the inclusion initiatives are carried out by project managers and others.

The time is now, for the minority business community to understand the needs of certain corporate projects and to begin to prepare to compete for inclusion by developing capacity. If we haven't prepared ourselves to successfully compete and participate in past projects, what would make it any different now?

The answer is nothing! If we don't mobilize as a minority business community, meet with the developers and create a meaningful plan for MBE inclusion, which includes doing anything and everything to grow capability and capacity, then we will be standing around when the project is completed, complaining about being left out. We don't need to wait for the corporations, developers and general contractors to reach out for us, we need to be proactive and reach out to them as a unified group, experienced and capacity sufficient, expecting and receiving our fair share of business and jobs because we are capable not because we are owed something.

The Urban Chamber will assist Las Vegas-based MBEs to develop capacity and we are re-designing a meaningful strategy to accomplish this. Everyone has a stake in this. My feeling is that some minority firms will get busy and do what's necessary. Many will not. If this is the case and we lose big time as a community on being included in these and other future projects like these, then who do we have to blame?

(*A person of Hispanic heritage can be of any race)