Las Vegas Sun

March 19, 2024

Downtown:

Cashman Center redevelopment could bring drone incubator

Cultural Corridor

Steve Marcus

Cashman Center, part of the Cultural Corridor, in downtown Las Vegas Sunday, Sept. 16, 2012.

With a 10,000-seat stadium, 98,100 square feet of exhibit space and 2,500 parking spaces, the Cashman Center is a prime target for redevelopment in downtown Las Vegas. And even though negotiating a redevelopment plan involves navigating through a maze of interests — the Las Vegas 51s have a lease on the baseball field until 2022, the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority owns the buildings and the city owns the Cashman Center land — it isn’t stopping about a half dozen developers from proposing plans to transform the 51 acres of city-owned land.

Among the proposals, one stands out for its futurist bent: Turning Cashman Field and the Center into an incubator for the drone and robotics industry. Organizers call it the Unmanned Aerial Robotics Resource Center. Zach Conine, one of the partners lobbying for the UARRC plan said his team, which received $500,000 in a federal grant contest this year, is in the process of negotiating with city officials and has had informal conversations with the authority.

The City Council, which has received multiple proposals and is the government body charged with approving a redevelopment plan for the Cashman Center, is not working under any deadline for finalizing a project.

“We obviously have a lot of questions,” Conine said. “They have a lot of questions.”

The project’s scope is ambitious. The proposal would effectively turn the Cashman Center into a space for around 250 unmanned robotics companies, from startups to mid-size companies. In the first phase of the project, organizers would provide nearly 200,000 square feet of testing space, 45,000 square feet of manufacturing space with access to 3D printers and offices for about 30 companies.

Conine said the team of five developers has already reached out to drone companies and have received interest from several, including startups in Oregon and Lisbon, Portugal. The project would be funded through investors, who would receive a stake in the portfolio of tenant companies incubated at UARRC. They expect the entire project, which will include construction of new facilities on the Cashman space, to cost about $125 million.

The proposal, Conine said, is more of a blueprint than a manual, and given the many potential uses of the Cashman Center, this flexibility might be important for seeing the project come to fruition. Jace Radke, a spokesman for the city, said Las Vegas officials are reviewing the UARRC project and several other Cashman Center proposals.

But for work on any proposal to be greenlighted, it will require more than the city's blessing. The LVCVA, which owns the buildings, would need to be brought into negotiations. Another factor: The 51s are in the second year of a 10-year lease on Cashman Field. Any project using their space before the lease expires would have to make provisions for the team to relocate.

Cashman Field is the oldest stadium in Triple-A baseball, and the owners of the team have expressed a desire to move the team to Summerlin. But ground has yet to be broken on a Summerlin ballpark, and the 51s have a lease on the Cashman ballpark until 2022.

“At this point those issues (with the LVCVA and 51s) have not been resolved to clear the way for a new development or redevelopment project at Cashman,” Radke said.

Several other proposals to redevelop the center are being considered, including one much-discussed proposal to repurpose the field as a venue for a professional soccer team, which would also include redevelopment of nearby land to include restaurants and housing. Additional options include turning the center into a hub for sustainable businesses or a multicultural center with a focus on the Latino community.

The drone incubator and soccer field might not be mutually exclusive, however.

Conine’s team is pushing hard to make the project work. With robotics increasingly used in commerce and everyday life, he sees it as a key for the area’s economic growth. In addition to forming partnerships with UNLV and the Clark County School District, Conine hopes the project will attract business away from nearby states, including Arizona and California. He sees opportunities for a range of industries, including companies involved in package delivery, driverless cars, virtual reality and search and rescue.

Regardless of how the city decides to use Cashman, Conine said the incubator project will continue, even if that means locating elsewhere in the valley. “The beauty of the proposal is it really will work anywhere,” Conine said.

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