High-tech company to meet with rural residents

Jeffrey Libby

Monday, Oct. 22, 2001 | 11:26 a.m.

Hughes, which is also being wooed by business leaders in Phoenix, is considering a roughly 25-acre parcel in the Wagon Wheel Industrial Park that could bring 200 jobs paying minimum annual salaries of about $41,000. The company has made no formal commitments.

Mission Hills residents have fought several projects in the light industrial park, helping to sink a proposed movie studio on 20 acres in 2000. They fought unsuccessfully against several other projects, including a 380,000-square-foot plastics manufacturing plant approved in September for 45 acres and a 396-unit recreational vehicle park being built on another 40 acres.

Residents also have fought the new state college, a project planned on 555 acres in the foothills mostly south of the industrial park. City and university officials will attend the neighborhood meeting to get feedback on new plans that would push the campus further south into the foothills and away from Mission Hills.

Officials will also discuss a planned municipal horse park, a recently approved rural preservation district and expansion issues facing the Clark County School District.

But getting positive feedback on proposals by Hughes may be most important, especially in light of new land conflicts that could slow the city's acquisition of the federal land required for the college campus.

Hughes plans to build four or five campuses around the world -- Henderson would be one -- as part of a $1.4 billion investment in its Spaceway program. This program, which could be operational by 2003, would use satellites to speed Internet users along the World Wide Web 1,000 times faster than conventional phone lines.

If the broadband satellite operation comes to Henderson, business leaders say it would attract other high-tech companies. Those companies would need more highly educated students, a prospect which could help the city's negotiations for the federal land to build the college.

"Hughes is extremely critical both to us in Henderson as a community and to the economy of Southern Nevada," Mayor Jim Gibson said. "They represent the most significant economic diversity activity we've seen."

Bob Shriver, executive director of the state Commission on Economic Development, agreed.

"Certainly we would like to get a favorable reaction from Mission Hills," he said. "It's been a long-term effort to attract a major high-tech company and this is exactly the type of marquee company we need."

Henderson's economic development department did not return calls for comment, instead referring questions to the PR Group, based in Las Vegas. PR Group declined comment.

Hughes Network Systems is a division of Hughes Electronics, which was founded by Howard Hughes.