Walters raps offer for land

Erin Neff and Steve Kanigher

Friday, Jan. 22, 1999 | 11:27 a.m.

Golf course developer Billy Walters said a Las Vegas official's recommendation to sell him city-owned land for $894,000 isn't a bargain compared to offers he's received for private acreage.

But David Roark, manager of the city's Real Estate and Asset Management Division, said his recommendation is a fair price for 160 acres at Stephanie Street and Vegas Valley Drive adjacent to a waste-water treatment plant. At least one local real estate professional believes the recommended price is actually far too low.

Walters, who is leasing the land from the city, said he'd accept the price if it is offered when the Las Vegas City Council takes up the matter on Monday.

He described himself as being caught between "a rock and a hard place" because his golf course on the property is almost finished, and his lease agreement gives him first dibs to purchase the land.

"From the city's perspective, I'm not in any position of strength," Walters said.

Roark calculated his recommended price by converting all the money Walters would have paid over the 50-year lease into 1999 dollars, which he estimated to be $732,334. He then added $161,398 using a complex formula that included taking the value of the golf course and spreading it out over 50 years. Rounded off he came up with $894,000, or about $5,600 an acre.

Roark said his calculation is a "standard used by CPAs to determine net present value."

But Kevin Higgins, senior vice president of CB Commercial in Las Vegas, said other commercial land in the area has been priced at about $40,000 an acre. Even taking the land's deed restrictions into account, Higgins said Roark's figure "seems awful low."

"If you were an owner with a piece of land right up the road from this, wouldn't you be concerned with that price?" Higgins said. "I would think so."

Walters, however, said he has turned down thousands of acres of free land offered by housing developers in better locations elsewhere in the Las Vegas Valley.

"We get calls from developers every day who want to give us land for free," Walters said.

He argued that the land in question is of such little value because it is contaminated and ineligible for any development other than a "green space" such as a golf course. The contamination was caused by run-off and spills from the Water Pollution Control Facility.

The city purchased the land in the 1970s for $780,000 to serve as a buffer zone between the facility and nearby housing developments. The land was appraised in December at $560,000.

"The primary goal here is to do something with that wasteland where nothing else can occur," Roark said. "This is not a money issue to me. It's about improving the aesthetics of the whole area out there."