City may ask BLM to buy golf course

Dan Kulin

Wednesday, Dec. 4, 2002 | 11:01 a.m.

The North Las Vegas City Council will decide tonight whether to ask the federal Bureau of Land Management to buy the Craig Ranch Golf Course, which city leaders want to turn into one of the largest public parks in the area, according to city documents.

The council will probably nominate the 132-acre golf course at 628 W. Craig Road for purchase by the BLM, Mayor Michael Montandon said.

"It would be a completely different track toward the same goal," Montandon said. "It's a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to have a 130-acre park in the middle of the city."

Last summer the City Council and the owner of the golf course asked the BLM to trade federal land for the golf course. But BLM officials turned down that request because the golf course is in the agency's disposable property boundary, within which BLM is not allowed to acquire new land, BLM spokeswoman Kirsten Cannon said.

For that reason, if the BLM approved the plan to turn the golf course into a park, the agency would probably not buy the land, but instead would give North Las Vegas the money to buy the land, Cannon said.

The land could cost $32 million to $38 million, according to city documents. The money for the purchase would come from the BLM through the Special Fund Account established by the 1998 Southern Nevada Public Lands Management Act.

The move by North Las Vegas comes after Interior Secretary Gale Norton in October put on hold a list of properties the BLM was to purchase. Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., requested the hold, because he said not enough Clark County land was being considered for purchase.

Last month Norton said the BLM would accept nominations for the acquisition of additional environmentally sensitive land in Clark County until Dec. 13.

Cannon said $8.9 million is available for proposals that meet the Dec. 13 deadline, which is not enough to pay for the golf course purchase. Also, those funds probably wouldn't be used to buy a golf course because it probably would not be considered environmentally sensitive land, she said.

But purchases nominated by Jan. 10 could be eligible for BLM funds set aside for parks, trails, and natural areas, she said.

It is unknown how much money would be available for proposals that come before the January deadline, Cannon said. The amount would depend on how much is generated from future BLM land sales, which typically occur twice a year and provide the money for BLM purchases, Cannon said.

BLM realty specialist Elizabeth Aberant said if the golf course proposal is nominated before the January deadline and BLM officials recommend the Secretary of the Interior fund the proposal, money for the plan could be available within two years. But it's unclear whether the land owner would wait that long.

"We need to do something fairly quickly," said Guy Inzalaco, a partner in Olympia Group, a Las Vegas firm that has an agreement with the property owner to develop the golf course or sell it to the government. "But I don't know what fairly quickly means."

"It would be easiest to develop it," Inzalaco said. "But the goal is to have this golf course become a park. ... It's an average golf course but could be a tremendous park."

Donald Nelson, managing partner of the group that owns the golf course, was out of town and could not be reached for comment Tuesday.

At one time there was a proposal to put a casino on the golf course property.

The golf course land that could now become a park also is next to 40 acres that was sold to a company that plans to build a hospital, Inzalaco said.