New boomtown: BLM auction in NLV to draw big bidders

Tuesday, May 8, 2001 | 10:36 a.m.

Carol Brown has watched the subdivisions and paved roads slowly encircle her home and horse farm over the past decade.

For Brown, development of nearly 2,000 acres next door might mean that a developer would buy her 1 1/4 acres, giving her the financial ability to move farther out from the urban core.

"If a buyer wants my place for development, they've got it," Brown said. "We've got horses and stuff, and we need to move farther out."

Brown and her husband, a recently retired Clark County employee, moved from a once-rural area near McCarran International Airport a decade ago. They thought that their home on Decatur Boulevard would stay rural for 20 years.

"Now it's traffic 24 hours, and it's not slowing down," she said.

Brown lives in the city of Las Vegas, but it is the federal Bureau of Land Management and North Las Vegas that are eager to sell and develop the land across from her home.

Eventually the BLM hopes to sell 7,500 acres of federal land to developers, all of it within North Las Vegas' city limits.

The BLM will sell 1,905 acres of that land Wednesday in an open public auction. Some of the biggest hitters in the region's highly competitive real estate market are likely to square off for the rights to build the Las Vegas Valley's newest master-planned community.

The minimum bid: $40 million. To even throw a hat in the ring, those companies need to demonstrate the ability to invest tens of millions more for roads, sewers, water systems and other infrastructure.

Another 26 smaller parcels of land scattered throughout the valley will also go on the block, with minimum bids totaling $15 million.

But the big boys will compete for the 1,905-acre prize in the afternoon at the Clark County Government Center.

The auction is a product of the federal 1998 Southern Nevada Public Land Management Act, which requires the BLM to sell land it manages in the valley to the highest bidder. The 1,905 acres in Wednesday's sale is by far the largest single parcel sold since those auctions began in November 1999.

The agency is putting up blocks of acreage for sale in what BLM officials hope will be a controlled growth over the next 20 years. About 622 acres have been sold. Another 23,000 acres are slated for sale.

Most of the money is used to purchase environmentally sensitive land or make capital improvements at federally managed recreation areas in Nevada. The Southern Nevada Water Authority gets 10 percent for infrastructure to support new development on land that is sold.

And 5 percent of revenue goes to the Nevada Permanent School Fund -- so far, $6.2 million.

BLM officials say there are several reasons why they are selling off the 1,905 acres now. Phil Guerrero, BLM spokesman, rapidly ticked off the reasons during a drive through the property Monday:

The law says land has to be sold; the sprawling desert up for auction Wednesday is sandwiched between developed areas of Las Vegas and North Las Vegas; the BLM doesn't have the law-enforcement resources to keep people and trash off the property.

"The BLM is a wild-lands management agency," Guerrero said. "We are not an urban real-estate manager."

The government of North Las Vegas is clearly one of the biggest movers behind the sale. For at least a decade, city officials have hungered for property taxes that hundreds of new, upscale homes would provide.

Jacquelin Risner, North Las Vegas' community development director, said the city doesn't want to expand its ample stock of "affordable housing." The city has most of the county's low-income housing, according to a 1997 Urban Land Institute report.

What the city wants is midpriced to upscale housing that will generate tax revenue, she said.

A home appraised at $100,000 brought about $1,200 in property taxes to the city last year. A $250,000 home, on the other hand, would bring about $3,000 to the city.

Property taxes bring in about a quarter of the city's annual $80 million operating budget.

Risner said the city is poised to bring roads, utilities and homes onto the land as soon as possible.

"There's land out there that needs to be developed," Risner said. "We're trying to be the catalyst."

Risner said some of the 7,500 acres slated for long-term development might eventually be used for industrial purposes. But for now, residential and some supporting commercial construction is slated for the new developments.

City officials are taking steps to ensure that the developer -- or developers working as partners -- with the winning bid can bring in the upscale community that they want.

The winning bidder has 30 days to agree to a stripped-down development agreement that will spell out BLM and city requirements, Risner said.

The rules of the auction bar quickly selling the property to another company to stop speculative bidders, she said.

The BLM and the city have worked together to put the rules in place to ensure that the new community on the valley's north side rivals a Green Valley or Summerlin, BLM business manager Roy Morris said.

Risner said homes will go up soon throughout the sale area.

"We'll start to see houses at the end of the second year, 24 months," she said. "It may happen sooner."

Developers will have another selling point by then: a major new road cutting through the middle of the property. The Las Vegas Beltway is scheduled to connect U.S. 95 to Interstate 15 by the middle of next year.

Developers are eager to put up homes, Risner said.

Two companies -- Del Webb Corp. and American Nevada Corp. -- are working as partners to bid on the land. Both are large companies that have produced master-planned communities in the valley.

To build a master-planned community of homes, businesses and recreational opportunities requires large tracts of land, which are becoming scarce in the valley, said Scott Higginson, Del Webb vice president of public and government affairs.

Del Webb has built the Sun City and Anthem communities. American Nevada Corp., owned by the Greenspun family, which also owns the Las Vegas Sun, developed Green Valley in Henderson.

Pardee Construction is another of the corporate bidders that will try for the development project.

"I'm not sure we're positioned to buy the whole thing, but we're positioned to be a part of it," Pardee's Cliff Andrews, community development director, said.

The third-largest builder in the region already has a master-planned community -- Eldorado -- just outside the 1,905 boundary, Andrews said.

Eldorado provides a blueprint for a similar effort in the new development area, he said.

"North Las Vegas in the past had a reputation as a down-and-dirty part of the valley," Andrews said. "We never treated Eldorado that way."

Carol Brown is not a part of the discussion on the future of the new development. She said she won't stand in the way, however.

"I know we've got to have the development," she said. "But give us horse people a chance too."

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