Wednesday, March 5, 1997 | 11:59 a.m.
Call it a Las Vegas standoff.
A feud between two gaming giants is holding up Clark County's plans to build a frontage road parallel to Interstate 15 that would service the backside of hotel-casinos on the west side of the Strip.
The deadlock between Mirage Resorts and Caesars World also is holding up the latter's plans for a 400-room tower.
"What's at stake here is important to the community, and is more important than these two properties," Commissioner Bruce Woodbury said to attorneys for both companies Tuesday. "Your two properties need to find some way to reach a common ground."
What's holding everything up in the air seems to be, well, air. Specifically, a portion of a development agreement dealing with the air rights over the right-of-way the county wants Caesars to give up for the frontage road. The air rights are necessary for a proposed public people mover system.
Caesars doesn't want to give up those rights because it fears the county might transfer the rights to The Mirage so it can build a monorail linking its properties to the north and south of Caesars.
The County Commission wants Caesars to transfer its air rights, as it has asked with most of its development agreements.
But the development agreement the county approved Tuesday "has no meaning whatsoever," Caesars attorney Mark Fiorentino said, because it doesn't grant consent power if the county decides to pass the air rights on to a private interest.
"It's an exercise in futility," because Caesars won't sign the agreement in its current form, Fiorentino said.
"What's obvious is that Caesars wants veto power over air rights," said Mirage attorney Mark Russell, who wanted to continue working with Clark County to find ways of "satisfying everyone's concerns."
Fiorentino said the company was willing to give up property valued at $500 million so the county could build a frontage road, and would give up the air rights for a public people mover system.
"We're willing to give the county everything they need, but we're not willing to give the air rights to the county so they can turn around and give them to a private property," Fiorentino said.
But commissioners interpreted consent as veto power, something it was not going to give to a private company.
"I think it should be up to this board to decide that," Commissioner Mary Kincaid said.
"You're saying go ahead and trust us, that we won't transfer these rights to the detriment of Caesars," Fiorentino said.
Other options available to Caesars include taking the county to court or asking it to remove the development agreement as a condition of its use permit, he said.
Wanting to avoid the "inordinate expense" of lengthy litigation, Woodbury gave the two companies 30 days to reach an agreement.
"If you don't go forward, don't do anything, but that also means we're not going forward with a lot of public needs," Woodbury said. "There is a great deal at stake here, including our ability to move forward with your project as well as the public's vital interest."
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