City to consider Enterprise Park for job training center

Wednesday, April 1, 2009 | 12:41 p.m.

A green job training center will be the focus of a 3.4-acre site in Enterprise Park, which was slated to be the future home of the Urban Chamber of Commerce.

The Las Vegas City Council voted Wednesday morning to push back construction of the urban chamber so this new project could be considered for the location.

“We see the vision and opportunity with creating a much, much bigger project now than what we were looking at before with the Urban Chamber of Commerce,” said Councilman Ricki Barlow, who represents Ward 5, where Enterprise Park is located.

The park is located on Martin Luther King Boulevard, between Vegas Drive and Lake Mead Boulevard, on the historic west side.

“With this, they’ll get two projects instead of one,” said city spokesman Jace Radke. “This allows them to have a job training center there, which would bring more jobs here.”

The Urban Chamber of Commerce plans to move in with the city’s business incubator, which is also located at Enterprise Park, in the next 60 days, said the chamber’s president, Cornelius Eason. The incubator is a center that helps small business grow.

“We have a collaboration between the city of Las Vegas, Clark County, the state of Nevada with (state Sen. Steven Horsford) and Sen. (Harry) Reid to create a business incubator that will ultimately create jobs and our focus will be on green energy jobs,” he said Wednesday.

Green energy jobs are a stimulus focus for Majority Leader Horsford, D-Clark County. Horsford recently introduced Senate Bill 152, the Green Jobs Initiative. This bill would retrain more than 3,000 workers and create new jobs with the goal of making Nevada more energy efficient through weatherizing schools and public buildings and installing solar panels.

The unemployment rate in Las Vegas is at 10 percent.

Scott Adams, director of the Office of Business Development and the city’s redevelopment manager, said construction on the site will be pushed back to June 1 so the city council and Horsford can further discuss the green job training center for that location.