Cleanup of contaminated Armory site a success story

Redevelopment projects usually come with reminders of what the site of the current triumph was in its former incarnation.

When the East Las Vegas Cultural Center opens sometime next year, it will be hard to remember the hulking gray eyesore with broken windows and diesel-greased floors that once stood in defiance of revitalization efforts.

Yet the city's efforts to turn the once-contaminated Armory site at Eastern and Stewart avenues into a gateway to eastern Las Vegas are now considered a model of urban renewal.

And the Environmental Protection Agency chose Las Vegas to host a tri-regional workshop last week about its Brownfields Cleanup Revolving Loan Fund Program.

"We've succeeded where some other cities have been struggling," said Jeff Dix, a senior development officer for the city who also oversees the Brownfields program. "We showed them how it worked on one of our own projects."

Las Vegas received a $500,000 EPA grant to help create a revolving loan fund to help businesses redevelop abandoned or under-used industrial areas.

The former Armory was just that.

In 1948 the city struck an agreement with the National Guard to purchase the land for $1. Since the city assisted in funding the original Armory building, the contract allowed the site and land to revert to the city if the National Guard ever left.

The National Guard departed in 1997, leaving the city with contaminated soil, an unusable building and a blight on the neighborhood.

After some initial testing and soil remediation, the city began looking for developers to breathe some life back into the corner.

But it wasn't until the revolving loan fund was established that the site became a very real redevelopment project.

The Armory was torn down and the land underneath cleaned up.

Now the city plans to build a cultural center on the site.

"It's going to be a true focal point for the neighborhood," said Sharon Segerblom, the city's director of Neighborhood Services.

The cultural center is being designed with a Spanish architecture theme, complete with an entry gate and campus-like setting on 3.8 acres. Although the timeline is tentative, construction should begin in August 2001 and take about eight months.

When completed, the project will include a senior center and small business incubator. The Clark County School District is planning to build Sunrise Acres Elementary School nearby.

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