Project delays put Urban Chamber in bind

By Timothy Pratt

Friday, Feb. 20, 2009 | 2 a.m.

A project meant to draw minority-owned businesses and jobs to West Las Vegas is being postponed indefinitely even as the need for it grows more urgent.

The Urban Chamber of Commerce will not break ground March 1 on a Martin Luther King Boulevard “business incubator” for which it has been planning and raising money since 2002. The nonprofit organization would support small and start-up businesses at the site.

With the valley’s unemployment rate at a 25-year high and headed for double digits, the project is something the “community needs more than ever,” said the chamber’s president, Cornelius Eason.

But the Urban Chamber is still about $1 million short of the money needed to start construction, he said. He hopes to raise the money from government sources, though he says the effort will be challenging in this economy.

The chamber had time before the economic collapse to get its funding squared away, however.

In March 2004, Las Vegas formally agreed to hand over a 3-acre site to the Urban Chamber, and the city increased the gift to 3.3 acres just before the July 2005 land transfer.

There was a “groundbreaking” ceremony in 2004 and a ribbon-cutting ceremony in 2005, not to mention donations of at least $325,000 from casinos, $150,000 from Clark County, and two federal grants totaling $2.25 million.

The chamber’s March 1 deadline was itself a postponement; an earlier agreement with the city called for construction to begin by August 2008.

Eason took over in January 2008 as president of the organization, described on its Web site as an “advocate for the creation, growth and general welfare of African American businesses.”

At the time, he said, “I can tell you today, history won’t repeat itself” with the project. “We will have a shovel in the ground” by the end of the year, he insisted.

That was before the economy began its downward spiral.

Now the chamber will soon be asking the city for another extension, though Eason wouldn’t say how much additional time he will request.

The organization will also soon seek more time from the federal Commerce Department for its $2 million grant, which is tied to breaking ground on the project by October. The additional $250,000, from the federal Housing and Urban Development Department, is good until 2012.

City Councilman Ricki Barlow, whose ward includes the site, told the Sun he is “in discussion about a variety of topics” with the chamber, including the possibility of finding other sites. Though he admitted he hadn’t “seen any signs” the chamber would break ground by March 1, Barlow insisted he was “not going to address prematurely” the subject in any detail.

Leonard Smith, regional director of the Commerce Department’s Economic Development Administration, said he will wait to see what the city decides and consider the chamber’s potential to follow through on the project before reaching any decision. He said two or three out of 10 projects his agency funds wind up seeking more time to break ground, and 1 in 10 never get built.

Eason said he didn’t know how long it would take to finish the project but said “many people want to see it get done.”