Fountain Plaza still dry, but city wants college

Jeffrey Libby

Thursday, June 28, 2001 | 10:22 a.m.

The Henderson Redevelopment Agency will likely offer $250,000 in rent money to the Nevada College of Pharmacy in exchange for an agreement from the college to move downtown.

Since March 2000 the pharmacy college has been planned as the anchor tenant for the Fountain Plaza commercial center. Fountain Plaza, however, has not yet been developed, and city officials are giving the developers until July 16 to secure financing.

While the city is willing to lose Fountain Plaza, it wants to keep the pharmacy college, even if it has to pay its rent for two years and assist with finding permanent headquarters for the school, which is expected to have 300 students and 30 teachers by 2004.

The two years worth of rent money was approved Tuesday by an advisory committee to the redevelopment agency. The redevelopment agency is expected to approve the offer July 17.

Officials with the college are enthusiastic about the offer, which would allow them to move from rented office space in Green Valley into a dozen mobile trailers behind a Mexican restaurant on Basic Road near City Hall.

The college would pay utility bills through July 2003. The city would pick up the bill to lease the trailers.

Fountain Plaza was proposed in January 1999 but has received several extensions from the city on its deadline to secure financing and begin construction.

Developer Phyllis Thompson has been given until July 16 -- the day before the City Council and Redevelopment Agency meet -- to secure financing for her $27 million commercial center. The 159,000 square-foot office and retail complex is planned for a 7-acre lot at the southeast corner of Basic Road and Water Street.

City officials insist that they will enforce this latest deadline.

If Thompson's company, Fountain Plaza LLC, can't come up with the money, city officials say they will build a downtown home for the college with another developer.

"Fountain Plaza as a building is nice -- and it's important -- but the people occupying the building is what will actually make the downtown," Bob Wilson, manager of the Redevelopment Agency, said Wednesday. "We want to keep the college. They are going to be very important to the downtown."

The three-year college, which enrolled its first 38 students in January, has recruited 85 additional students to start classes in September.

During informal talks in recent weeks, Wilson said, City Council members have expressed concern at the $250,000 expenditure. But they also have told him they intend to support the college even if Fountain Plaza fails to secure funding by July 16.

Councilman Steve Kirk was one of those concerned by the large expense. But Wilson said as the Fountain Plaza project asked for delays, the pharmacy college continued to outgrow its current space. Wilson didn't want to lose the college as it looked for new space.

Wilson also said that even if the college students buy just one $10 lunch each week over the next 24 years -- the remaining years that tax dollars will be reinvested in the redevelopment area -- the city would still generate an additional $3 million in revenues.

"And that's just one thing, one added benefit," Wilson said, adding that they will likely do other shopping in the area, attracting more businesses.

Councilman Jack Clark said he would uphold the July 16 deadline.

"We have to have something moving forward. I sincerely hope it will be Fountain Plaza, but the bottom line is, we have got to move forward," Clark said.

Fountain Plaza was one of two proposals the city accepted after designating in 1995 a total of 1,307 acres in the old downtown as blighted . The first proposal fell through, and city officials have been granting extensions to Thompson in hopes that Fountain Plaza would become the first big redevelopment project for the area.

If Thompson can come up with financing, the city has agreed to provide the project with 17 house lots worth $2.6 million and another $1 million in improvements to infrastructure.

In the past, when Thompson has faced deadlines, she has said that financing would be forthcoming presently. She repeated it Wednesday, saying financing should be finalized by early next week.

"It's been a long time coming," she said.