Legislators cite rapid LV growth in airport plan

Benjamin Grove

Tuesday, Nov. 9, 1999 | 11:24 a.m.

WASHINGTON -- A proposal in Congress to transform 6,650 desert acres southwest of Las Vegas into an airport probably will be set aside this week as lawmakers push to close up shop for the session.

But Congress is likely to give the Ivanpah Valley airport legislation new life next year, and many bill-watchers predict it will pass.

How did this complex Nevada proposal develop and wind up in Washington? Who are the major players driving it -- and who stands to benefit most?

Here's how two members of Congress, officials at the Clark County Department of Aviation and a Connecticut investor have labored to establish a second Las Vegas airport that could mean millions to local companies and incalculable profits for the local gambling industry.

The Ivanpah Valley airport proposal was born when assistant planners at the Clark County Department of Aviation began crunching numbers in the early 1990s.

McCarran can serve about 55 million passengers. It serves about 33 million now. Given current growth trends, the airport will be maxed out in about 10 years, officials say.

"We felt it prudent to start looking at another site," said Randall Walker, the county's aviation director.

So officials studied sites during 1995 and 1996 for a new airport, including sites north of the city, the Eldorado Valley, Mesquite and the Ivanpah Valley between Jean and Primm. The Ivanpah land, federally owned by the Bureau of Land Management, was clearly the best of the lot, Walker said.

Walker approached the BLM, and the agency was receptive, Walker said. But BLM officials had nearly completed a 10-year land-use plan and they didn't want to revise it, Walker said.

So Walker went to Congress. He quickly found bill champions in then-freshman Rep. Jim Gibbons, R-Nev., and Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev.

Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., and Sen. Richard Bryan, D-Nev., have co-signed the bills but have been less vocal supporters.

"It wasn't that long ago," Reid said, recalling his first involvement with the Ivanpah proposal. "But everything in Nevada happens quickly because of growth. In 20 years, McCarran is going to have more passengers than they can handle. It'll be loaded to the gills."

Gibbons and Reid both introduced bills last year that would transfer the BLM land to the county for an airport.

But the legislation drew fire from environmentalists who were concerned that the airport would harm the wildlife, namely desert tortoise, in the 1.6 million-acre Mojave National Preserve in California, about 15 miles from the planned runways.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., was skeptical about the airport. She had pushed for the law in 1994 that put the preserve under national park protection.

Eventually, the Ivanpah proposal died, not because of environmental concerns, but because it was wrapped alongside dozens of other park bills inside a larger omnibus bill that the House killed in October 1998.

Walker flew to Washington in July to regroup with the Nevada delegation.

That month, Feinstein sent letters to Reid and Bryan outlining her concerns about Ivanpah's effect on the preserve.

Walker sat down with Bryan, Reid, Berkley and Gibbons at a conference table inside Reid's office suite in the Philip Hart Senate office building near the Capitol. We can answer every question the airport critics toss out, Walker told the delegation.

"I came back to give a presentation as to why we have to do this now, what the environmental issues were and how we'll address those concerns," Walker said.

The delegation agreed.

"If we are going to move Las Vegas into the 21st century, we need to expand the ability of the public to get to Las Vegas," Gibbons said in an interview last week.

The Ivanpah bill was revived this session. Gibbons pushed it in the House.

Gibbons met individually with members of the Resources committee. He privately urged committee chairman Rep. Don Young, R-Alaska, to support the bill. Young agreed. The bill passed out of committee.

But it still awaits a vote on the House floor.

The Senate version of the bill has stalled in the Energy and Natural Resources Committee. Feinstein still opposes it.

Reid and Feinstein aides have chatted during the past two weeks but talks are ongoing.

"She'll come along, I'm sure," Reid said last week.

Feinstein spokesman Howard Gantman said, "As to whether an agreement will be made or the outlook for next session, that is a question better addressed to Sens. Reid and Bryan. We wrote a letter that said here are my concerns and that's where we are."

Outside the public sector, just one businessman has actively pushed for the Ivanpah airport.

Raymond Young is a 57-year-old Princeton graduate, logistics expert, electrical engineer and former U.S. Department of Transportation official who by his admission prefers working behind-the-scenes outside the limelight.

Young's interest in Ivanpah dates to the mid-1980s, when he worked for logistics giant Emery Worldwide. Through his work, he noticed the need for a cargo airport in the southwestern United States.

His interest intensified in 1989 as Young labored as a private consultant working a logistics project for the U.S. Postal Service. Young walked away from the project with an idea.

In 1995 Young joined what is now a four-partner investment group called Hamilton Associates, L.L.C., based in White Plains, N.Y. Young created what he now calls the Hamilton Development Group to pursue the Ivanpah project. He enlisted the help of French engineering firm Dumez-GTM, an international player in large-scale capital projects like bridges and tunnels.

Young's lofty goal is to position Ivanpah as the hub of a new-age cargo system that orchestrates airplanes, trains and trucks moving products and goods faster than ever before. Young believes that Internet-driven electronic commerce will prod the cargo industry into becoming more efficient.

Young proposes to make the airport a public-private operation wherein Clark County puts up the land and the Hamilton group pays to build the airport, which Young sets at about $300 million. The county would own the airport, but Hamilton would "design, build, operate and maintain" the cargo operations.

Hamilton and Clark County would split the airport profits.

"These are expensive projects that involve a certain amount of risk," Young said.

Young wants to create a consortium of three to five companies to join Hamilton.

Young won't say which companies he is courting. No companies have committed yet, he said.

Young also won't say how much he hopes to make in eventual profits.

Young, who gave Reid $500 for his 1998 campaign, said he has spoken with the senator more than six times beginning in April 1997, by his estimate, as well as with Gibbons and Bryan.

"In a state like Nevada, if the delegation wants to be accessible, they are very accessible," Young said.

Reid and Gibbons do not recall having conversations with Young, they said. But they like his cargo hub idea. Still, everyone involved says the county, not Young, is driving the Ivanpah proposal.

"We are going to drive this process whether (Young) is at the table or not," the county's Walker said.

Notably absent from the cast of players in the Ivanpah proposal so far are businesses that would benefit most from a new airport.

Perhaps most notably absent are the casinos, including the MGM and Mandalay Bay, which operate casinos in Jean and Primm.

They have not lobbied for the airport, Reid and Gibbons say.

The Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority has been only slightly more vocal.

"The benefit to tourism is that you would reduce congestion, not only of cargo traffic, but in general aviation and make more room to generate more passenger flow both domestically and internationally," said the LVCVA's Bill Mahaffey, transportation manager.

Interviews with other business interests, including warehouse operators, railroad owners, construction companies, developers and delivery services consistently revealed that few know -- or admit knowing -- anything about the Ivanpah proposal.

Among those who said they had scarcely heard of the proposal were spokesmen with cargo shippers United Parcel Service and the U.S. Postal Service, Bechtel Corp. of Nevada, which is overseeing airport projects at McCarran Airport, Union Pacific Railroad and several airlines.

Others who had heard little of Ivanpah include the Air Transportation Association, which represents major airlines, the Air Forwarders Association, a leading air cargo association and the National Industrial Transportation League Shippers Association.

Construction companies stand to gain millions in lucrative contracts with a major capital project like an airport. But officials at Southern Nevada's largest construction association, Associated General Contractors, haven't thought much about Ivanpah.

"We certainly do lobby for pro-growth initiatives, but not necessarily specifically for the Ivanpah Airport," Tony Illia, an AGC spokesman, said.

"To be perfectly honest with you, I wasn't aware if this was an actual proposal or a pie-in-the-sky kind of thing," added Corey Newcome, project manager for Las Vegas Paving Corp., which has done major runway projects at McCarran. "But we'd certainly be interested."

For now, most corporations are watching to see what Congress does with the Ivanpah proposal, officials say.

"I hope it passes next session, and I hope it passes early on in the session," Gibbons said. "Each year that we delay passage of this bill we get perilously close to not being able to meet the traveling needs of the people visiting Las Vegas."

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