Trash bag maker may be neighbor to college

Jeffrey Libby

Thursday, March 22, 2001 | 10:55 a.m.

The state college at Henderson could find itself on the south side of the tracks from the country's largest maker of trash bags if a deal aired Wednesday goes through.

Texas-based Poly America announced during a meeting with Mission Hills residents that it plans to build a 400,000 square-foot industrial plant with a half-dozen 75-foot-high silos just north of the Wagon Wheel Industrial Park in southeast Henderson west of U.S. 95.

By 2003, Poly America plans to load as many as seven railroad cars a week with trash bags and other plastic products for such western regional clients as Wal-Mart and Costco.

The Union Pacific line, which dead-ends a few miles south of the business park, travels along the southwest side of the proposed industrial plant and along the northeast side of the proposed college site. The two parcels are separated by about 1,000 feet of track.

On the eastern corner of the proposed college, the campus would be directly across the tracks from a 40-acre recreational vehicle park under construction. The Paradise Coach Resort Park, approved a year ago with snowbirds in mind, will have 396 units with full utility hook-ups.

City officials announced the 85-acre industrial park as a new site for the four-year state college on Tuesday after timing and environmental issues killed long-held plans to build the college as a primary anchor of the redevelopment effort in the old downtown.

Officials had hoped to build the college as part of an upscale master-planned community on 260 acres donated to the city by LandWell developing company. But they need to present a solid land deal to legislators to have any chance of securing the $23 million in state funding recommended by Gov. Kenny Guinn.

The city filed an application on Monday to annex an additional 555 acres of federally owned land adjoining the industrial park. The city would need the acreage -- in addition to the 85 it already owns-- if the college gets off the ground.

Vicki Taylor, assistant city manager, said the Mission Hills neighborhood would buffer the new college site from the industrial plant.

"The new site works extremely well," Taylor said. "It will have a nice entry way, nestled up into the hills. It will be a beautiful campus."

But State Senate Minority Leader Dina Titus, D-Las Vegas, said this morning that winning the BLM land should not be taken as a given.

Titus also questioned whether a family bringing a potential student to view the college would see a campus in an industrial park as a good thing.

Titus, who said last fall that the college was "a done deal," is less sure now.

"Every difficulty that arises for the college makes people think more and more if this is a good time to do this, especially now with this money crunch," Titus said.

Howard Ross, a Mission Hills resident who attended the Wednesday meeting, had doubts about the future of his rural neighborhood.

"Last month they started on the motor homes. Then it was a school for the state. Now it's a plastics plant. What is this, a dumping ground for everything Henderson doesn't have a place for?"