Thursday, April 30, 1998 | 10:25 a.m.
An ad hoc committee formed to evaluate proposals for a public golf course at the south end of the Las Vegas Strip will let the Clark County Commission decide which one will best meet the community's recreational needs.
The commission on Tuesday is set to pick one of three applicants it will negotiate a development agreement with to turn 155 acres of undeveloped county and federal land into a golf course and recreation facility.
"We don't want to make a recommendation because all three proposals are very different," Clark County General Services Director Earl Hawkes said.
The committee limited its report to a summary of each applicant's qualifications and what issues the county would have to resolve depending on whom it chooses, Hawkes said.
While the applicants will each have 10 minutes to present their proposals to the commission, they already have been lobbying commissioners individually.
Last fall, the commission voted to seek requests for proposals to build a golf course and "compatible recreation component" on a lot south of Russell Road between Las Vegas Boulevard and Interstate 15.
Each proposal had to say how many tee times it would set aside for local residents, what they would charge locals to play 18 holes and how much gross revenue would go back to the county. The proponents also had to make practice space and time available for the UNLV golf team.
And because the northern half of the property is leased by the county from the Bureau of Land Management, the county would be able to perform audits of the books and approve fees. The other half is county-owned but subject to Federal Aviation Administration regulations because it sits in McCarran International Airport's flight path.
Invitations were sent to 103 golf course development companies and people who called expressing interest, but only three proposals were submitted.
"When they found it was to be built with the developer's money, that kind of stopped a lot of them," county purchasing analyst Sharon Hauht said.
The proposals came from the U.S. Grand Prix-Las Vegas and O.B. Sports consortium assembled by Las Vegas public relations honcho Sig Rogich; a joint venture between the Gary Player Golf Design Group and the Club Corporation of America; and the locally owned Billy Walters Group.
While each proposal features an 18-hole, tournament-level golf course, the applicants varied greatly on their concept of what "compatible recreation component" was supposed to mean.
* The Rogich group is proposing, as the name Grand Prix Links implies, a 2.2-mile Formula One race track winding through a 7,000-yard golf course that would cost $60 million. The golf course would be closed three weeks a year in the fall, for the auto race and to reseed with winter grass. During the rest of the year the race track would be used as a mini-Grand Prix course at night.
Sixty percent of the tee times would be reserved for locals during the week and 30-40 percent on weekends. Greens fees would range from $40 to $75, depending on the time of year. The county would get 1 percent of the gross revenue or an annual minimum guarantee of $500,000, whichever is greater.
* The Gary Player joint venture is proposing a tennis club adjacent to its "Desert Legends" golf course. It carries a price tag of $11 million, but could go as high as $19 million to build a water treatment plant as well.
The joint venture plans to charge locals greens fees of $112.50 on weekdays and $127.50 on weekends, with at least 25 percent of the tee times reserved for residents. Proposed rental fees to be paid to Clark County are 8 percent of gross revenue, or an annual minimum guarantee of $280,000 based on a first-year gross income of $3.25 million.
* The Walters Group wants to build a 9-hole, par-3 short course to accompany its 7,000-yard championship "Las Vegas Gateway" golf course designed by Pete Dye. That project has a projected cost of $33 million, not including a water re-use treatment facility. That would add up to $10 million to the project's cost.
Residents would pay $53 per game year-round, with 51 percent of the tee times reserved for locals. The proposal did not say how much gross revenue the county would get, but it appeared that the applicant didn't plan to share revenue with the county until the 11th year of operation.
All three proposals had an "aggressive construction schedule," one analyst for the county said -- 100 weeks for Grand Prix, 96 weeks for Player, and 81 weeks for Walters.
That might work for the private industry but wouldn't be realistic given the BLM and FAA approvals required, officials said.
The question of water availability will have to be dealt with, too, officials said. Until a water re-use plant is built, the course will have to use drinking water for its landscape. There have been no studies on the availability of effluent water delivery and no feasibility studies have been conducted for a water re-use plant on the site.
The Grand Prix course has the highest projected water need at 346.6 million gallons a year. Walters said it would need 216 million gallons a year for irrigation. The Player group did not list its water needs but plans to use desert landscaping.
About 1 million gallons a day of raw wastewater from the sewer system at Reno Avenue and Las Vegas Boulevard would be available for irrigation purposes.
The review team noted that the Walters and Player groups did not adequately address the water re-use issue.
Both the Grand Prix and Walters projects conflicted with the airport's departure-critical zone, which would prohibit grandstands, media cameras or large groups of spectators. Any aerial activity like blimps would be prohibited.
Officials also worried that if there was no long-term commitment from Formula One officials and revenues were less than expected, "the county may be left with an abandoned race track on a golf course."
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