Council OKs college land deal

Jeffrey Libby

Wednesday, Aug. 8, 2001 | 10:51 a.m.

Seventy-three acres of vacant, city-owned land were sold without comment Tuesday to the state university system for the initial campus of the Nevada State College.

The Henderson City Council approved the sale with the same vote that approved 57 other items, including paving contracts and new city staff positions.

It was a soft endnote to a controversy that began more than four months ago when the city abandoned a plan to site the college on 300 acres just north of the old downtown. With legislators poised over funding allocations in Carson City, city officials quickly assessed the current site -- an industrial park in the foothills of southwest Henderson -- as the next best site.

Nearby residents of Mission and Paradise Hills, who have opposed this and several other projects in the same area, were nowhere to be found on Tuesday.

Many say they are still concerned, however, at the additional 555 federally-owned acres the city hopes to lease from the Bureau of Land Management. That land would allow the college to expand over several years to a full campus estimated at a building cost as high as $1.3 billion. Residents of the two rural, horse-riding communities say a full campus would block their access to the mountains.

Of the 555 acres, 320 acres are outside the Las Vegas Valley boundary of federally-owned land earmarked for sale.

The city is working with Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., to include an amendment of the disposal boundary as part of lands legislation he is drafting.

The city sold the 73 acres at $55 an acre, the same price it paid to acquire the land from the BLM in 1970.