McCarran plans for final stage of growth

Friday, Aug. 17, 2001 | 4:26 a.m.

Not so long ago the Las Vegas airport was a dusty strip of dirt surrounded by empty desert.

But things have changed dramatically since the late 1940s, when regular air service started bringing gamblers to the neon-lit mecca. Today, McCarran International Airport is the world's seventh busiest.

Airport managers plan to expand the terminals, roadways and other infrastructure that handled about 37 million people in 2000 to handle 55 million people in 2010.

The expansion will almost certainly be the last major effort to increase the airport's size and the last time that large numbers of nearby residents will have to move to make room for McCarran's expansion, planners say. The county is now buying homes to make room for a realignment of Russell Road -- a principal conduit of ground traffic for the airport.

But some of the 440 families who will need to move away from Russell Road for the roadway expansion aren't happy.

Edward Miller lives about a block from Russell Road and Maryland Parkway.

The airport's negotiators have offered about $147,000 for the Miller's home. But Miller, who is disabled and uses a wheelchair, says he has spent $50,000 to renovate his home to accommodate his special needs.

He needs a house with similar accommodations, never mind the mature trees and home repairs over the years.

But to buy such a house would cost $170,000 to $200,000. Miller, who lives on a fixed income, said he would have to get a mortgage to pay for a new house. He doesn't have one now.

He would like the airport to pay for the additional cost of the new house, cover any increased property taxes and pay for time and expenses incurred while he is looking for a new place.

"A fair offer is whatever it takes to get me into another house that is comparable, where I don't have to worry about plumbing and stuff, because I just had that done," Miller said.

He said the airport is playing hardball in an effort to move him out of the home he has shared with his wife for a dozen years.

"This is not negotiating, this is take it or leave it," Miller says. "I'm being displaced against my will. The bottom line is (airport officials are) not dealing fairly."

Some of his neighbors, however, are happy with the deals offered. Sheila Speer and her family have lived along Russell Road for a decade.

The airport's buyout is enabling her family to move to Green Valley, away from heavy traffic, road construction and other problems along the busy street.

"We were able to upgrade our lives," Speer says. "We consider it a blessing."

She said the airport's buyout team worked well with her family. Speer declined to give the buyout price, but she said the airport paid the price of the home, covered moving expenses and helped reduce the interest rate for the mortgage on her new home.

"We were very satisfied with the overall price," she says. "They were just really delightful people to work with."

Airport officials have said they are trying to accommodate the needs of the people who live along the Russell Road expansion, but they know not everybody is happy.

Some people are unhappy with the realignment, although they live outside the immediate expansion area. They could be affected by increased traffic, Clark County Aviation Director Randy Walker says.

New amenity

But the neighborhood will also have a new amenity: A 22-acre park is part of the expansion.

Walker says the expansion will take about three years to complete. No other large-scale disruptions of residential neighborhoods should be necessary around McCarran, he says.

"We can't expand McCarran more," he said, because the costs would be huge and the potential payoffs limited.

The homes that have to go weren't always there. When the airport was started, it was alone. It is now surrounded by houses, businesses, roads and people. It is a brightly lighted island in an urban sea, and that island is getting larger.

Airport planners envision two more terminals to the existing two. Terminal 3, focusing on international flights, would cost nearly $800 million and would open in 2007.

"That will clearly be the largest of the projects we have left," Walker said. Estimates for the entire airport expansion, including the Russell Road work and new terminals, top $1.4 billion.

For Walker, it's a question of balance.

Millions more visitors to Las Vegas may bring the promise of more money and more jobs, but those visitors also potentially threaten to tip the scales that balance roads, runways and terminal facilities at McCarran.

The only way to respond to the swelling number of visitors is through the expansion of all three elements that make up that critical triangle of infrastructure (roads, runways, facilities), Walker says.

The expansion will continue through the next decade, targeting gates, terminals, runways and roads.

One of the biggest headaches for airport planners has been more than 100,000 vehicle movements in, around and through McCarran daily.

"We know the roadways are way congested now," Walker says. That will likely grow worse as more passengers pass through the airport.

One step the airport will take will be to reroute thousands of vehicles that pass through the airport but don't use it. Those vehicles use the airport tunnel as a convenient north-south route between Interstate 215 and the Strip.

Besides Russell Road and airport tunnel work, another answer to the traffic conundrum will be to consolidate all 11 car-rental facilities, now scattered in and near the airport, into one 80-acre site about 10 minutes from McCarran.

That will mean passengers can use a single bus system to get or drop off rental cars, replacing the eight buses now used. Walker said the central rental site on Gilespie Road will be completed by 2004.

Other changes

Other changes waiting in the wings -- literally, in some cases -- is another segment of D-Gates, which should open in 2004, and the addition of 10 aircraft gates to the current 26.

One element of the infrastructure triangle won't change, Walker said. "The airfield is essentially done," he said. "We're not going to build any more runways."

There really isn't anywhere to put them.

That doesn't mean the region isn't going to stop attracting more passengers. For every new hotel room that opens, the airport handles 350 more passengers, Walker said.

For its future needs, the Aviation Department is looking south to the dry lake bed in the Ivanpah Valley for a new airport.

The Ivanpah airport, still in the planning stages and expected to cost about $1 billion, would be complete by 2010, just when McCarran is expected to reach capacity.

Dennis Mewshaw, Aviation Department planning manager, said the Ivanpah Valley, despite criticism from environmentalists, is the only site regionally that fits the needs for a new facility.

It is within 40 miles of the urban center; it is away from residential areas; and it's on Interstate 15, a major transportation corridor. Environmentalists are concerned about the effect on the Mojave National Preserve, a 1.6-million-acre home for rare desert wildlife on the California state line.

But Mewshaw said his office is working to keep aircraft away from the preserve, and the 15-mile cushion between the preserve and the airport site should limit any impact anyway.

Walker and Mewshaw are sensitive to the charge that airport expansion helps fuel growth that has sent subdivisions sprawling across the desert. Walker said it is overall economic growth, particularly in the tourism and gambling sectors, that has pushed airport expansion. And the airport is struggling to keep up.

"It's very simple. We respond to the growth in the hotel and resort industry ... We can't respond quite as fast as they can. We're probably about a year behind where they can do things. It's a constant demand.

Driven by tourism

"This community is driven by tourism," he said. "If you live here and are employed, directly or indirectly you are dependent on that industry."

Local tourism officials agree. And they also understand the importance of the airport expanding to accommodate millions more visitors.

If the airport -- or with Ivanpah, airports -- did not grow to service the influx, "not only would it have negative impact on the product we're trying to sell, it would have a negative impact on the entire economy of Southern Nevada," says Bill Mahaffey, Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority transportation marketing manager.

Overloading the airport system would kill new housing starts, hotels would stop adding rooms and overall investment would plummet, he said.

"All of these entities would be going somewhere else instead of Las Vegas."

Walker said he and his staff are working to prepare for the continued growth. But sometimes the numbers stagger even a man who has lived here all of his 47 years.

As a boy, Walker would come out to watch the planes take off and land at McCarran.

"The airport was the middle of nowhere," Walker says. "Literally, there was nothing out here."

The picture is a lot different today, and one thing Walker is sure of is that the airport system will continue to grow.

"Who would have ever projected that Las Vegas would ever be where it is today, 20 years ago?" Walker said.

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