Metro Police to pitch new digs

By Abigail Goldman, Sam Skolnik

Thursday, June 19, 2008 | 2 a.m.

Sheriff Doug Gillespie confirmed late Wednesday that Metro Police will propose building a headquarters in Las Vegas, consolidating for the first time many departments and functions spread across the valley in more than 60 locations.

In making the proposal, Gillespie is attempting something previous sheriffs have tried and failed to accomplish — housing the department’s leadership and its vital units under one roof.

Under the new plan, that roof would be on the northwest corner of Martin Luther King Boulevard and Alta Drive, just west of Interstate 15. The site is currently an empty dirt lot.

Metro officials will reveal their plans at a public meeting Monday before a committee made up of members of the City Council and the Clark County Commission — the two agencies that jointly fund Metro.

One clear argument is that Metro has grown from 400 staffers in 1973 to 5,000 as of two years ago. Without a centralized headquarters, Gillespie and his predecessors have argued, they have been hampered in attempts to run the department effectively.

A new headquarters would unite, for example, the crime lab, several detectives bureaus and the top brass, who are currently in offices they have outgrown on the seventh floor of the Las Vegas City Hall tower downtown.

“I am confident. I believe this is a worthwhile endeavor,” Gillespie said in an interview after being called by the Las Vegas Sun. “I believe that from a financial standpoint the proposal makes sense. From an efficiency standpoint, the proposal makes sense.”

Gillespie said some of the funding would be in the form of savings from lease payments being made to house Metro units across the valley. However, taxpayers would have to bear much of the remaining costs.

He wouldn’t say how much Metro thinks the project would cost or how much additional public money it would require. Gillespie said he knows that in these tough financial times, he will need to convince the public this is a good, and necessary, project.

Metro’s Fiscal Affairs Committee will meet at 2 p.m. Monday in the Las Vegas City Council chambers.

City Councilmen Gary Reese and Larry Brown serve on the committee, as do Clark County Commissioners Susan Brager and Chris Giunchigliani. MGM Mirage executive Bill McBeath is committee chairman.

Gillespie said renderings of a possible new headquarters will be shown, and more information will be released about the proposed project’s specific designs. He did say that rather than a single large building, the headquarters would comprise several buildings, with a “campus-style” approach.

“This is not going to be a Taj Mahal; this is going to be a very practical office complex,” he said. “I think the offices we have should depict the level of professionalism that we have within our organization, but then again, we realize these are tax dollars.”

According to Las Vegas Finance Director Mark Vincent, Metro has more incentive than ever to be looking into a new headquarters.

That’s because the city is in the beginning stages of developing a proposal for a new City Hall, several blocks away in downtown.

City leaders have offered the current City Hall building to Metro if the city ends up moving, but Metro has said it is not big enough and does not suit the department’s needs, Vincent said.

“They’ve always argued that (a new headquarters) would save them in lease costs, and otherwise help them gain efficiencies, which makes sense intuitively,” Vincent said.