Thursday, Dec. 7, 2000 | 10:44 a.m.
The Las Vegas City Council played the role of a corporate board of directors Wednesday, wheeling and dealing its way to 10 acres downtown.
First the council unanimously established nonprofit corporations to buy and sell the property just north of 61 acres the city already owns.
Next the board inked a deal with Union Pacific Railroad to purchase the site for almost $4.3 million, then voted to sell it to LVDT Redevelopment LLC.
Why all the moves?
Largely to protect the city from liability related to environmental hazards known to exist underground at the former Union Pacific yards.
Wednesday's four separate votes got the city a prime parcel of land that will be developed as a high-tech business incubator. And equally important, the city reduced its chances for environmental lawsuits.
"The maximum worst case potential risk is $300,000," Lesa Coder, director of the city's Office of Business Development, said. "In the whole scheme of things for environmental contamination and the value of the land, that's pretty low."
Mayor Oscar Goodman heralded the move as "sophisticated and mature," and said the land will become "the centerpiece of the heart and soul of Southern Nevada.
"When we look back on it and our children look back on it and they pass the confluence of I-15 and U.S. 95 and what will ultimately be there, they will thank this council," Goodman said.
In addition to approving the purchase and sale of the property, the council granted the city manager's office authority to continue negotiating certain issues related to the property.
Some outstanding issues include the location of any Cal-Nev pipelines on the site, excavation considerations, the location of fiber optics easements and relocation of billboards.
Wednesday's vote assigns the purchase contract to City Parkway IV, the nonprofit corporation with both Coder and Deputy City Manager Steve Houchens as officers.
The agreements indemnify the city from known contamination and fixing offsite ground water problems. Union Pacific is released from obligations against third-party claims.
If additional environmental hazards are found, the Nevada Division of Environmental Protection will step in to study the problem and remediate it.
The city will also purchase a $10,000 to $20,000 insurance plan to cover any additional environmental risks.
"It's a prudent safeguard to have that insurance in place," Councilman Michael Mack said.
But the creation of the nonprofit corporation to shield the city from environmental exposure raised an interesting question by Councilwoman Lynette Boggs McDonald.
Why didn't the city do the same thing when it agreed to buy the 61-acre parcel from Lehman Brothers?
"What liability will the city be exposed to on the 61 acres?" she asked.
Coder said that in hindsight that might have been prudent, but she added that she didn't think the city has any liability on the 61 acres.
After all of the maneuvering for the downtown parcel, the council convened as the city's Redevelopment Agency and took up even more issues.
In the Redevelopment Agency meeting, the board unanimously voted to finalize changes to the relationship between the city and the City Centre Development Corp.
The memorandums of understanding approved Wednesday make the city staff -- not the City Centre board -- responsible for all downtown redevelopment. The board will now act as an advisor with Coder as president.
Those votes formalized changes that had been planned for months. The changes are designed to give the city more control over downtown redevelopment.
In yet another vote, the Redevelopment Agency approved an amendment to the agreement between the city and the developers of Neonopolis.
The latest amendment -- the fourth since the project's inception -- accommodates the transition from the city's construction of the parking garage to World Entertainment Center's construction of the retail and entertainment portion of the center.
The revision also establishes plans to deal with certain defects in the garage and provides for payment to the city of about $500,000 in cost overruns incurred on the garage.
Developers plan to hold a groundbreaking for the long-delayed project next Tuesday and expect to begin construction on the retail portion this month.
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