County officials downplay effect of golf course on police facility

Clark County officials say a better financing package for a new Metro Police Communications Center played a bigger role in the doom of the current 911 facility than the pending $33 million golf course at the south end of the Las Vegas Strip.

However, county officials say the police building at 4850 Las Vegas Blvd. South likely will fall to bulldozers that clear the way for the 27-hole course once the new communications building is up and operating, possibly by early 2000.

"We had two choices -- renovate the old building or build a new one (on 7.5 acres of county-donated land at Russell Road and Decatur Boulevard) -- and we decided it was best to take a clean shot at a new state-of-the-art facility," county spokesman Tom Warden said Thursday.

He said that while it would cost $4 million to renovate the old communications center and $7 million to build a new one, it is more cost effective to go the more expensive route because the county can issue the construction bonds at an excellent rate.

Warden was responding to a story in Thursday's Sun that reported that the Metro Fiscal Affairs board learned at its monthly meeting Wednesday that the current communications center would have to make way for the golf course.

Warden said that while the decision to raze the building will be up to the developer, it probably will be demolished because such a structure would not fit in with the upscale golf course on 155 acres of publicly owned land south of Russell Road.

But he noted that a county fire station south of Metro's 911 facility on Las Vegas Boulevard and bounded by the proposed golf course will remain in operation.

The county's decision to go with the new communications center also saved officials the awkward situation of having to ask the developer to spare a second county facility.

Local golf course developer and sports gambler Billy Walters was awarded the development contract last week by the County Commission in what had been one of the most controversial local land deals in recent history.

Three of the seven commissioners had to abstain from voting on the project because of their relationships with some or all three applicants, each of whom is a high-powered community leader, and a fourth abstained for different reasons.

That left less than half of the county's elected representatives -- Myrna Williams, Erin Kenny and Yvonne Atkinson Gates -- to decide the fate of the issue.

Williams is one of the five members of the Metro Fiscal Affairs board that oversees the financing of Metro, which is co-funded by Clark County and the city of Las Vegas.

Warden said it was Williams who proposed that once the bonds for the new 911 facility are retired, the county and city would pay to operate the new center at about what they are now paying to finance the old one.

Metro's current dispatch facility has 179 employees operating in cramped quarters, using 12-year-old equipment and dealing with an overburdened 911 system that receives more than 2 million calls a year.

But, fewer than three months ago, the decision whether to build the new facility or renovate the present one was up in the air -- and a point of debate among candidates for sheriff.

Incumbent Sheriff Jerry Keller made the proposed new center a top priority, while one of his opponents, Chuck Lee, supported efforts to save the present site, double the work stations and reduce operators' 16-week training period.

archive