Las Vegas dazzles visitors with its millions and millions of lights—and Spokane's Power City Electric Inc. wants to be involved in servicing them, making them more efficient, and maybe even adding some more of them.

The Spokane company has opened a new affiliate company in the Nevada entertainment capital to seek work there.

"By the end of the year, I expect we'll have about 10 people. By the end of next year, probably 30 to 40 people would be controlled growth," says Colin Thompson, Power City's chief financial officer.

"Some of that is assuming that Las Vegas turns around," Thompson says. "They've had some of the worst economic news of any region. Our niche, and it has been our niche in the Northwest, is service, sending out an electrician to do a repair or a small team of electricians to work on a remodel or a solar installation or to help with an expansion for a company that wants to add a couple of offices or move into a new warehouse. Our niche is not to come down there and be involved in the next mega, $1 billion hotel facility that gets done."

Power City has brought in Randy Long, a veteran of the Las Vegas construction market, as president and branch manager of PCE Nevada Inc., the company that it's formed to handle its Nevada business.

"He's got customers that will call him regardless of what company he's working for," Thompson says.

PCE Nevada is starting out with a staff of three, but Power City says its entry into the Silver State is just one of many steps it's taking to achieve its growth strategy and geographic expansion through the western U.S.

The company, which employed a total of 190 after Bruce Morelan, the owner of Rod's Electric Inc., of Spokane, bought it in 1997 and combined the two concerns, employs right around 400 now, with more people during the middle of the construction season and fewer during the winter.

In 2007, it bought D.W. Close Inc., a Seattle company that Thompson says had been serving that market since 1947 and has a loyal following of local customers. Power City, D.W. Close, and PCE Nevada are owned by SescoNW Inc., Morelan's Spokane-based holding company that does business as SescoNW Construction Group. About 12 years ago, Morelan and other shareholders also launched PowerCom Inc., a Spokane company with an office in Bothell, Wash., that does low-voltage power, voice, data, and fiber-optic installations.

Power City and its affiliates now do business in Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana, and California, and Power City has a branch office in Pasco, Wash., Thompson says. The Las Vegas company will do business as Power City.

In Spokane and Eastern Washington, where Power City is the largest electrical contractor, the company has room to grow only through good performance—by having "top-caliber people doing excellent work, he says. We want to be like the Yankees, the team that everybody wants to play for, and everybody expects to be the best."

The nation's burgeoning interest in energy efficiency and the proliferation of new energy-saving technologies are providing opportunities for electrical contractors to grow, although a company has to educate its clients about those opportunities, Thompson says.

"It's unbelievable the paybacks that we can get with lighting," he says. "Solar is growing in the Northwest," partly because of incentives offered by the state of Washington, he says.

In addition to its move into Las Vegas, Power City also is looking for opportunities to grow by entering other new markets.

"Portland, Ore., is interesting—it makes a lot of sense—and northern California," Thompson says. The company doesn't have permanent offices in either market, and could profit "if we could find the right acquisition or person to hire." The company also strives to find work in central Washington, where much electrical work gets done, he says.

"We had something come up in Minneapolis," but the company decided against moving into that market, he says. Power City's management team shares a belief with Morelan, who retains the title of CEO but isn't involved in day-to-day operations, that acquisitions make the most sense if managers can travel from Spokane to a new operation and back in one day.

"If it's Miami, we have no interest," he says. "If it's Las Vegas, I'll have dinner at 8 p.m., but I can still get there and back in one day."

The Las Vegas expansion could be seen as curious because the entertainment mecca's economic troubles have been covered exhaustively in national news stories, but Thompson says Power City has several reasons for expanding there even though the economy is troubled.

"You really can't expand in a strong economy," he says. "The people that you need to hire are making really good money and have no interest in taking a risk" by leaving a good position.

"It's not going to get any worse" in Las Vegas, Thompson adds. "That isn't to say we think it's going to get better soon."

Still, he says, "Even in a terrible economy, most businesses need an electrician occasionally. Everybody knows that's a power-driven economy. That four-mile strip has a lot of lights. There's a lot of work that gets done."

For customers, maintaining a relationship with a good electrical contractor is like having a good auto mechanic, Thompson says. "If your mechanic does a good job, treats you right, and the bill is right, you go back to him." He says Power City has a reputation as a service-conscious and quality-oriented contractor.

"We can survive while the economy is down," he says. "There's always room for good contractors. We've got a good team."

Power City, which has been around since 1936, also has benefited in recent years from changes in construction, he says.

"In the last five years, projects need to consume fewer resources. Teams have to be more efficient in how they do a project. Through the life of the project, efficiency is part of it."

New, low-power lights the company installed on crosses at St. Aloysius Church here provide an example, he says. "They can be seen from all over the city."

These days, the goal is not just to decide how a project can be done, but how it can be done so it makes for a more efficient component of the building, he says.

"Any contractor that's not paying attention to that is going to find themselves just passed by."