Tuesday, Dec. 16, 2003 | 9:11 a.m.
This week's Las Vegas City Council meeting will cover everything from taking the first step toward a major public art project to allowing grocery stores to deliver booze.
Not only can you point and click your way to grocery delivery, you soon might be able to grab a six-pack of beer with it.
The Las Vegas City Council on Wednesday will consider an ordinance that would allow grocery stores in Las Vegas to deliver liquor along with groceries to online customers.
"It's a situation where stores like Albertson's and others are offering groceries over the Internet," Las Vegas City Manager Doug Selby said. "This would allow them also to sell their alcoholic beverages."
Councilwoman Janet Moncrief was on the recommending committee that Monday passed the proposal along to the full council. She said her main concern was ensuring that minors could not order alcohol online.
She said she was told that "the person who orders has to give their identification, and the same person has to receive it at the home and show identification. So they covered the loopholes."
Bob Gronauer, a lawyer representing Albertson's, said this would be a first for the valley, although alcohol sales over the Internet are allowed in California, Oregon and Washington.
"Nowadays I guess you do everything over the Internet ... It's all about time. Everybody wants more time, and to them, this is an easier and more convenient way to shop," Gronauer said.
He said the store's studies indicate that the availability of alcohol on the Internet does not much affect sales. And, he said, people cannot buy alcohol by itself. It must be in conjunction with a food purchase.
Arts district
The city also will consider Wednesday a $30,000 contract for a model of what boosters hope will be a world-class centerpiece of the nascent arts district.
The model, created by sculptor Yaakov Agam, is intended to set the stage for the project, which will involve 45 18-foot steel sculptures set on Boulder Avenue between Main Street and Casino Center Boulevard. As envisioned, the project would entail closing that section of Boulder Avenue.
Mayor Oscar Goodman said "world class is an understatement" of his goals for the project.
The arts district, he said, "is very near and dear to my heart and therefore the city has to be very supportive of this project."
"This brings us once again to a whole different level than where we've been," Goodman said. "We're in the 21st century, and we hope to be in the forefront of the 21st century to make us not only a destination, but a cosmopolitan, world-class city ... If you pass up this chance, you're a fool."
Pointing to recent news of L'Octaine, an apartment complex breaking ground in January, and the Holsum project, a former bakery to be converted into live-work space, Goodman said people who thought the arts district would not be successful are being proven wrong.
"Now that (developments) are happening, they shouldn't resist it," Goodman said.
Jack Solomon, owner of S2, which produces and sells high-quality lithographs, said he knows of people ready to kick in money toward the estimated $1.5 million it will take to build the sculpture garden.
"This is very significant," Solomon said of the proposal. "It will be something that you've never seen before."
The sculptor, Agam, works with geometry and color, and the 45 pillars "will be like a little forest, and as you walk through the forest ... the colors and forms change."
He said his idea is that the sculpture garden will be free and open to the public. The model will be due nine months after the contract is signed.
Centennial celebration
The Centennial celebration has a budget, and Las Vegas City Council will consider it Wednesday.
The initial budget indicates about $1.26 million in 2004, the bulk of it coming from Clear Channel, which has a contract to raise corporate sponsorship revenues.
The budget for 2005, when the party really starts, has not been finalized, but Mayor Oscar Goodman said it could be up to $15 million. Much of it depends on the centennial organizers' ability to secure public space -- in the airport, for example -- that Clear Channel can sell to advertisers.
"Then we will have the birthday party of all birthday parties," Goodman said. "So far everybody is cooperating and trying to get it on."
Stacy Allsbrook, centennial celebration project manager, stressed the early indications are estimates only. Her goal, she said, is throwing the biggest party possible -- as well as promoting the culture and history of the Las Vegas Valley -- without using tax money.
Cleveland Clinic
The proposal at the heart of downtown redevelopment efforts -- luring Cleveland Clinic to Las Vegas -- takes another step Wednesday when the council considers a $340,000 contract to conduct a feasibility study.
That's half of the cost of the feasibility study, and would set in motion a timetable under which city officials would know by March whether or not the project -- proposed for the former railroad yards -- will move forward.
The city has owned 61 acres of the former Union Pacific property for about two and a half years and spent time soliciting ideas -- receiving proposals for everything from tech centers to major league sports stadiums -- before the council decided to handle preliminary development itself.
The city recently approved $2.1 million in design and engineering contracts to begin developing the land. It also has approved a preliminary design that places the medical campus on about 18 acres to the north, an "urban village" of about 23 acres in the middle, and a 4.43-acre performing arts center to the south. The remaining acreage would be roads and open space.
The estimated cost for the initial phase of development -- for streets and other infrastructure, landscaping and plazas, and open spaces -- was estimated by city officials at about $23 million.
The academic medical center concept would place the Cleveland Clinic in physical proximity to the University of Nevada Medical School. Some basic planning for the medical school project has been completed, and fund-raising has begun. School officials have estimated the first phase of a complex, which would include clinics, some research, and academic and administrative space, to cost $65 million over five years.
Detention officers
The city can make money by hiring an additional 15 detention officers at an annual cost of about $1 million, according to a justification prepared for the request, which goes before the City Council Wednesday.
That's because the city can make $1.19 million a year from renting out 50 beds in Unit 6 at the Stewart and Mojave Detention Center to other law agencies, the request backup paperwork states. The city makes $10.3 million a year renting beds to other law agencies, according to the backup.
In addition, because Unit 6 already is open, "it has increased overtime costs and the potential for staff burnout."
Adding the 15 positions "won't eliminate overtime, but it will ease some of the crunch there," Selby said.
Floyd Lamb Zoo?
The city is discussing with the state the possibility of taking over Floyd Lamb State Park, and the council is to hear an update Wednesday, along with a presentation from a group that is proposing a zoo on the site.
City Council members have said Las Vegas taxpayers should not be saddled with the cost of running the park, estimated at close to half a million for maintenance in the first year alone. Still, they see the land as a valuable piece of property in a section of the northwest valley that eventually will become part of the city.
Floyd Lamb State Park is surrounded on three sides by the city, and eventually will be within the municipal boundaries. The 2003 Legislature made provisions for turning it over to the city, but the negotiations over how to do that are stuck on some key details.
The issues include cost of maintenance and potential development, the municipal Northwest Open Spaces plan, which could take a year to complete, and flood control and other infrastructure in the area. Also of importance are covenants that limit the use of the park to "passive recreation," which generally means hiking and nature-gazing.
The park encloses about 2,000 acres, most owned by the Bureau of Land Management, but some owned by the state.
"It's our understanding the 600-and-some acres that are state-owned lands would have restrictions on them as far as what we could do," Selby said. "The federal land outside of that would be subject to federal requirements under the Recreation and Public Purposes Act and that could allow for active recreation."
The city gave the park to the state in 1977. The state Legislature this year passed three bills, two in the Senate and one in the Assembly, that would allow the city to take it back. The city tried to negotiate for 50 to 75 acres of the park for flood control, but the state declined, preferring instead to make a deal for the whole park.
As for the idea of a zoo, George Chanos, an attorney for Mona and Ed Sher, who initiated the proposal, said only that his clients plan a presentation to council Wednesday.
"The reason for this meeting is for them to approve going into negotiations," he said. "If we get that green light, then we're going to move forward ... and at that point a lot of those details would be forthcoming."
A spokesman for the Shers, Marvin Miller, said a month and a half ago when the idea first came up that the Shers were willing to make a "substantial" investment in the project. They said the project would include cooperation with the Bowmanville Zoo, a privately owned property near Toronto. Miller said they were looking at a state-of-the-art facility, on about 200 acres. For a size comparison, he said, the San Diego Zoo operates on about 150 acres.
archive
