Monday, May 17, 2004 | 10:55 a.m.
Las Vegas officials plan to expand City Hall across Las Vegas Boulevard to Sixth Street and are taking the first steps this week toward purchasing a gasoline station/convenience store and several aging apartment buildings that would need to be demolished to make way for the expansion.
The Las Vegas City Council's Real Estate Committee today is expected to recommend starting negotiations for the first five parcel purchases for the more than $25 million expansion project, and the full council is expected to approve the move Wednesday.
The purpose today is to get initial public comment. The issue Wednesday is a consent agenda item that is considered routine and can be passed with dozens of other items by a single vote and without comment unless a member of the City Council brings it forward for discussion.
"Hopefully we can negotiate prices and not have to use eminent domain, but, if it is necessary, we will ask the City Council to use it," said David Roark, manager of real estate and assets for the city. "We have to have this property for the expansion of City Hall."
While Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman and other council members have opposed the use of eminent domain as it has been used in the past to assist private redevelopment projects such as the Fremont Street Experience, Roark notes this is a public project that will benefit all citizens.
The purpose of building a larger City Hall, he said, is to bring together numerous services such as public works, planning and development and other city entities that currently are scattered throughout the city into one centralized location for the convenience of the general public.
The move would allow the city to save more than a half-million dollars a year that is paid on leased buildings, officials said. Also, because more people would come to that area, the city hopes an enlarged City Hall will increase use of the Stewart Avenue parking garage that currently is not making enough money to pay off the debt taxpayers incurred to build it.
But to break ground on the expansion project by next year as planned, the city must first secure the block bounded by Las Vegas Boulevard, Mesquite Avenue, Sixth Street and Stewart Avenue as well as part of another block east of the city parking lot at Mesquite Avenue and Las Vegas Boulevard.
The city already owns several parcels in the area, including the City Hall Annex and Manpower building directly across from the 10-story City Hall tower at 400 E. Stewart Ave.
The properties for which the city will begin negotating, if approved Wednesday, are the Spirit Pump & Snack and adjacent parking lot at 321 and 329 Las Vegas Boulevard North, a small strip of apartments at 512 E. Mesquite Ave., and homes converted into apartments at 405 and 409 N. Sixth Street.
Roark also said the city would move to buy additional property in the area at a later date.
Should negotiations fail, the law allows municipalities to force the sale of private property for fair market value if a project is for the public good. The city and the former property owner then would go to court to have a judge determine whether the price the city offered indeed is fair.
Hamid Maghamfar, owner of the Sprint Pump & Snack, is not happy about that possibility.
"This business has been here 42 years," he said. "That has to also be figured into the offer."
Roark said the property owners for this first round of purchases have been notified of the city's intentions to buy them out.
According to the Clark County Assessor's records, the other parcels targeted by the city are owned by Russell Gullo of Las Vegas (the 6th Street properties) and Robert and Cynthia Piccininni of Henderson (the Mesquite property). Attempts to reach them for comment were not successful.
County records show the taxable value of the properties are:
The expected completion date for the expansion project is 2007. There is not yet a design plan for the project, Roark said, noting that at least seven artists' conceptions are being considered.
The City Hall expansion has been on the drawing board for about eight months, he said. Last year, the City Council redirected proceeds from $25 million in bonds originally slated for a proposed parking garage near Third Street and Bonneville Avenue to help fund the expansion. The city plans to use consolidated tax revenue to pay off the debt of those bonds.
The expansion will be an energy efficient "green building" that will utilize sunlight to replace some of the indoor office lighting, Roark said. He said it is possible that walkways over Las Vegas Boulevard would link the old City Hall with new building.
The city has had problems with eminent domain issues in the past.
The use of eminent domain for the Fremont Street Experience started a legal battle that began in 1993 and did not end until this past March when the U.S. Supreme Court declined to consider an appeal of the Nevada Supreme Court's decision last September to uphold the city's use of eminent domain to take downtown property owned by the Pappas family.
The city has offered the Pappases $4.5 million, but the family says the land is worth $7 million. A Clark County District Court will decide the price tag.
The Minami Tower is an even older case. Heralded in 1989 as what would be the state's tallest building, dozens of small businesses on Las Vegas Boulevard between Clark and Bridger avenues lost their property or leaseholds under the threat of eminent domain. The tower deal on the six-acre site eventually fell through when Japanese investors pulled out, but not before the old businesses were bulldozed and a huge foundation cavity was excavated.
The news media dubbed it "The Minami Hole," into which thousands of taxpayer dollars were sunk.
The mayor and other City Council members eventually heralded the project a success after the city reached a deal with the General Services Administration to acquire the land and build the $97 million federal courthouse and offices that today stands on the site.
archive
