Plan to build around City Hall approved

Erin Neff

Tuesday, Dec. 22, 1998 | 11:06 a.m.

The Las Vegas City Council has approved a plan to keep the current City Hall as the center of a 20-acre civic campus downtown.

The council voted unanimously Monday to approve a plan to build up around the existing 25-year-old building in the next 20 years to allow the city offices room to grow.

Other options included selling City Hall and building an entirely new complex or keeping the current building and continuing to lease out space in non-city-owned buildings downtown.

"We have to look at staying where we are, with the commitment we've already made downtown," said Mayor Pro Tem Michael McDonald.

Councilman Arnie Adamsen agreed that Monday's decision sends a message to other redevelopment efforts in the city's downtown core.

"We are here, we're here to stay," Adamsen said. "And we're creating our own critical mass downtown."

That building will start with construction of a five-story parking garage, which will be built on top of a 30,000-square-foot office.

That facility, which will be built on the site of a current city-owned parking lot at the corner of Stewart and Fourth streets and connected to City Hall via an above-street walkway, will create about 600 parking spaces for use by city employees.

The garage immediately adjacent to City Hall will then become public parking.

"That garage will be done to coincide with Neonopolis," Deputy City Manager Steven Houchens said of the $99-million entertainment complex set opening in November of 2000.

The City Council also gave its approval Monday for city staff to seek an architect or design firm for the Stewart Street garage project. That project will cost $12 million.

By the year 2002, the city will gain an additional 20,000 square feet of office space when Municipal Court moves to the Regional Justice Center.

By 2007, the city will need to build a 110,000-square-foot office tower near City Hall on space currently occupied by Municipal Court trailers and the Engineering and Design Building. The new tower will be operational when the lease expires at 731 S. Fourth St., where the city's planning and development departments are currently renting space.

The entire project, including the $12 million parking garage, will be $43 million. The city, however, will actually save $28 million by keeping City Hall and building on adjacent property, Houchens said.

"We're really building on a 20-acre campus," Houchens said. "It will last us, spacewise 20 to 30 years and beyond."