Office tower planned at downtown location

A committee charged with overseeing and promoting downtown development was taken through a dizzying tour of planned projects Wednesday, capped by a proposed office tower on the site of the failed Sun Plaza.

The Pauls Corp. of Aurora, Colo., handed the City Centre Development Corp. a $50,000 check to have the exclusive right to negotiate with the city's Redevelopment Agency for the next 120 days.

"We all felt they had an excellent approach to the site," said Nick Niarkos, a board member of the downtown development corporation who serves on a subcommittee to field proposals for the vacant land at Fourth Street and Lewis Avenue.

"The committee was impressed with their track record both here and nationally," Niarkos told the development corporation and a meeting room packed with city officials.

Paul Powers, president of The Pauls Corp., said his company is willing to work with the city to determine purchase and lease options based on the project's eventual land value.

"We would think that would be a normal expected term," Powers said, referring to one proposal that The Pauls Corp. could purchase the site using 9.5 percent of the rents it collects from tenants over a 2- to 3-year period.

The Pauls Corp. has developed 12 million square feet of office and mixed-use space nationwide. Locally, it developed the City Center West office tower at Lake Mead Boulevard and U.S. 95.

The planned Fourth and Lewis project will be a minimum of 100,000 square feet of rentable space in a Class A office tower, similar to City Center West.

Under terms of the proposal, the city's redevelopment agency will build a 400-plus space parking garage with public financing and would then receive roughly 20 percent of the rent on the building in return.

"It will result in a steady stream of income to the city," Niarkos said.

The planned 14-story Sun Plaza building failed in March when the city refused a request from developers American Nevada Corp. and Nevada State Bank for $1 million more in city funding on top of the $6.4 million the city already shelled out for the land and an additional $750,000 the city spent to ready the site for development.

The 283,000-square-foot Sun Plaza had difficulty pre-leasing tenants. Only anchors Nevada State Bank and the Las Vegas Sun and the law firm Harrison, Kemp and Jones were committed to the project.

The Greenspun Corp. owns both American Nevada Corp. and The Las Vegas Sun.

Niarkos said The Pauls Corp. project likely won't have as many difficulties finding tenants because it has 183,000 less square feet to fill than Sun Plaza.

"This was a realistic size of the building we want," Niarkos said.

Powers then took notes about a host of other downtown projects that can only help him attract tenants to his project.

Fremont Street Experience President Mark Paris said the Race Rock restaurant under construction will be open in September on 26,000 square feet of space in the Experience parking garage.

The garage is about to get a paint job to tone down its bright red facade in an effort to attract one or two tenants for an additional 18,000 square feet of retail or restaurant space, Paris said.

The development corporation also got its first look at what is being called Parkway Center -- the first phase of development in the massive Union Pacific-owned land adjacent to downtown.

The first 39 acres will be master-planned to create an "urban street experience," said Donna Alderson, who is working on the design standards for the site.

Opus has tentative plans to develop an office tower on the first 5 acres of that parcel.

The master-planned concept will go before the city's Planning Commission on June 10 for approval.

"In order to make this thing work, it has to be planned properly from the first building," development corporation board member Ken Templeton said. "We have a chance to hit a home run there."

The corporation also saw updated architectural renderings for the planned 18-story Regional Justice Center located between Lewis Avenue and Clark Street at Third Street.

David Oka, who works for the city's redevelopment agency, also updated the board members on a number of redevelopment projects, including a planned 80,000-square-foot office building at Fourth and Clark streets.

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