Boulder Dam Hotel gets state cultural grant

Monday, Feb. 8, 1999 | 10:35 a.m.

CARSON CITY -- A state grant of $157,928 is going to the Boulder Dam Hotel in Clark County to help restore the historic building, which will become a bread and breakfast resort.

The hotel was one of 24 projects that received money from the state Commission on Cultural Affairs in a program to preserve historic sites.

"They've done a really good job in opening the museum and art gallery and now they want to open the rooms upstairs," Ron James, state director of historic preservation, said.

Once the hotel is completed, James said, hotel management students at UNLV will run the business. Revenue will be used to restore the rest of the hotel, built in the 1930s.

The commission received requests for $7.6 million and whittled those down to $2.5 million. The biggest grant of $270,000 went to set up art shops in the closed Riverside Hotel in Reno, which is being taken over by the city of Reno to preserve the landmark.

Other Clark County projects receiving grants included $44,000 to the Clark County Heritage Museum in Henderson; $90,000 for continued restoration of the Huntridge Theater on Maryland Parkway; $51,400 for a former school in Logandale that is being turned into a meeting center; $17,200 for the Desert Valley Museum in Mesquite; and $176,720 to the Junior League of Las Vegas to buy the land and restore the Whitehead House.

The commission funds the grants with $20 million in cultural preservation bonds issued by the 1995 Legislature.