Expansion bid OK'd for LV Convention Center

The Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority board of directors rejected the protests of three contractors and voted Tuesday to approve a bid to build a 1.3 million-square-foot Convention Center expansion.

The board unanimously approved a $113 million bid from PCL Construction Services Inc. to build the expansion, the largest single project ever undertaken by the LVCVA.

PCL, which built the Staples Center arena in Los Angeles, the $210 million Hawaii Convention Center in Honolulu and an expansion of the Long Beach, Calif., Convention Center, offered a base bid of $97.4 million for a two-story building just south of Desert Inn Road and a $15.6 million "alternate" bid for a structure with meeting rooms bridging Desert Inn Road.

The controversial expansion has been the subject of several lawsuits and threatened legal actions. The potential for more controversy emerged Tuesday when at least three contractors formally protested the awarding of the bid to PCL.

Two letters were received by LVCVA Purchasing Director Craig Rowley challenging the PCL bid based on contracts the company offered to a roofing subcontractor, Anning-Johnson Co. Written protests were sent by Eberhard Southwest Roofing Inc. and Sletten Construction of Nevada Inc. Sletten submitted the second lowest bid on the expansion project.

The letters said Anning-Johnson does not have a local work force and has a "ghost office" with no employees based in the city. The bid documents say a subcontractor must have "local facilities and personnel capable of providing ongoing maintenance for the completed work."

Representatives of Eberhard Southwest and Sletten could not be reached for comment.

A third protest was delivered verbally by attorney William Wray on behalf of Micco LLC at Tuesday's meeting. Micco had similar concerns about a drywall subcontract offered to Midwest Drywall Inc.

Wray said he would review options with Micco Executive Vice President Gerald Rousselle before deciding whether to press a legal challenge.

Tom Smith, vice president of facilities for the LVCVA, said protests and challenges from contractors are a routine part of the bid process, especially on a project the size of the expansion.

The board approved the bid, including a contingency of 10 percent of the contract price for cost overruns. Even with the contingency, the bid cost would be below the $125 million LVCVA officials budgeted for the project.

Smith said ground will be broken on the project next month and PCL expects it to be completed in 20 months, in time for the 2002 Winter Consumer Electronics Show in January.

The new building would be more than a quarter-mile long along Desert Inn Road. With two stories of convention space, the expansion would be more than twice as large as the expansion completed in 1998 northwest of the original convention center and bigger than the original convention area.

With the meeting room space spanning Desert Inn Road, it would be possible for a conventioneer to enter the building at the corner of Paradise Road and Convention Center Drive and walk indoors more than a half mile to the east end of the new expansion.

The expansion also has been designed to accommodate an outdoor pedestrian bridge connecting the building to a proposed monorail station on Paradise near Desert Inn Road.

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