A decade in works, Harmon will now cut across the Strip

Friday, Feb. 13, 2004 | 11:37 a.m.

More than a decade after Clark County began talking in earnest about building Harmon Avenue through Las Vegas Boulevard, the county's Public Works Department says that within a matter of weeks motorists will have another east-west road to drive on.

Observers of the travel lanes on the Strip choked with pedestrians and motorists say the roadwork on a little more than a half-mile is sorely needed -- and years overdue. The road will take motorists from the industrial area west of Interstate 15 over the interstate, connect to Frank Sinatra Drive and, after a sharp bend at Las Vegas Boulevard, on to Paradise Road and Swenson Street.

The Harmon Avenue connector, first studied by the county in 1990, ties together some of the most important roads near the Strip and some of the biggest names in Las Vegas history -- names such as Wynn and The Mirage.

Representatives of Clark County Public Works and owners of nearby properties, particularly from MGM MIRAGE, which owns land on two corners of the intersection, say that the long time frame for the work is because of lengthy negotiations among them.

"We're kind of used to long-term negotiations," said Marty Manning, Public Works director.

In 1994 the Clark County Commission approved by a 5-1 vote a design for the roadway that bent up and over a piece of property at Harmon owned by Mirage Resorts, now MGM MIRAGE. The move came two months after the same commission waived its dedication -- or gave up its rights -- to the straight-through road alignment that would have accommodated the road.

The commission had overruled engineers for public works, which had issued a study that anticipated Harmon going straight through the property and urged that the county hold onto the dedicated strip through the 55-acre property.

The commission was roundly criticized for what some called a sweetheart deal with then-Chief Executive Steve Wynn. Some of those criticisms still exist. Manning said not all of them are entirely fair.

"There's been a lot of public exposure, a lot of discussion," he said. "We've had discussions with virtually all the property owners on both sides of I-15."

Some observers have targeted the price tag for the project, which includes the purchase of about 2.3 acres on the northeast corner for $36 million.

It also includes construction of the road from Polaris Avenue, over I-15 and across Las Vegas Boulevard for $11.5 million, $8 million for the acquisition of the right of way from MGM MIRAGE, and another $4 million to $5 million for work on the intersection -- a total of about $60 million.

But Manning said an important part of that cost is the 2.3-acre purchase on the corner. A third of an acre of that has become part of the intersection, and the rest will serve as a staging area for workers during the intersection construction, but most of it will likely be auctioned by the county at a later time, he said.

The county could recoup more than the original $36 million investment, Manning said.

"We'd like to get it back on the property tax roles," he said.

He said that if the county had been required to take property for the rights of way under eminent domain, the price tag for the county could have been much higher. The $8 million to MGM MIRAGE for rights of way is the result of negotiations that also produced Frank Sinatra Drive.

Frank Sinatra Drive and Harmon together will provide an alternative network that will provide a way for employees, delivery trucks and other traffic access to many of the Strip's biggest resorts.

"This all goes back to when the Mirage originally acquired the Dunes," said Mark Russell, MGM MIRAGE general counsel. That acquisition occurred in 1993, the same year the Dunes' main tower and sign were demolished.

"This was part of a much larger agreement with the county that involved a lot of other property," agreed MGM MIRAGE spokesman Alan Feldman. "In the negotiations, the county asked us for a significant amount of land. This was a very large discussion about transportation in the whole corridor."

Russell said the acreage given to the county was "in excess of five acres."

Part of the skepticism of the project stems from the unusual 45-degree bend Harmon takes to go around the MGM MIRAGE property on the southeast corner of Harmon and Las Vegas Boulevard -- the site of the old Dunes.

In the 1994 county commission vote that was a first step to the project, only Commissioner Bruce Woodbury voted against moving the road around the bulk of the property. He also was frustrated that the county commission declined $1 million that Wynn, the Mirage CEO, offered to defray costs for the transportation project.

At the time, Wynn, flush with the success of the Mirage that had opened a few years earlier, said that the 55-acre property would be the site of a new megaresort, at the time dubbed the Beau Rivage.

The Beau Rivage never opened in Las Vegas, although MGM MIRAGE opened a resort of the same name in 1999 in Biloxi, Miss.

The property in Las Vegas is still a vacant lot. But Feldman said the benefit of the bend remains, in that it will allow his company to develop a large project on the site.

He said the company is "not yet prepared to put a date" on construction or opening, and no project plans have been publicly released.

Feldman said the project, when it does come, will bring with it significant economic benefits with new jobs and tax revenue to the county.

"It will be a project of substantial size," he said. "Look at its neighbors."

A half-mile to the north, the resorts include Bally's, the Bellagio, Paris and the Aladdin. A half-mile to the south, the resorts include New York-New York and the MGM Grand.

The land, Feldman said, is "one of the greatest assets our company has."

One of the properties at the intersection of Harmon and Las Vegas Boulevard is the Harley-Davidson Cafe. On the southeast corner, the operators were part of the negotiations over the fate of the intersection -- and have concerns about the pedestrian access to their restaurant and memorabilia store.

Chief among them is that pedestrians will no longer have a regular, signaled intersection to cross from the west side of the boulevard to their site.

"Instead of having a crosswalk that simply goes across Harmon, we now have to do a pedestrian bridge," said Chris Kaempfer, attorney for the cafe.

He said the design of the intersection can mitigate some of the impact on his clients.

"We do want to acknowledge that both public works and the county commission have pledged to do everything in their power to minimize the impact to Harley-Davidson," Kaempfer said.

"If the pedestrian crossing issue can be resolved and if all present traffic movements can be maintained so that access to the Harley-Davidson Cafe is not impaired, we will try to make the best of a bad situation that we had nothing to do with creating. We are working with public works now. They are trying to address all of our concerns."

The pedestrian bridge will direct walkers on the west side of the boulevard to the east side, but the $1.5 million structure planned by public works and approved earlier this month by the county commission is temporary. Manning said the structure is temporary because his department does not know what will ultimately come in on the southwest corner, the site of the old Dunes now owned by MGM MIRAGE.

The temporary bridge will still have concrete footers and an elevator to provide access for people with mobility difficulties.

"It is a temporary resolution to get people across more safely," Shelton said.

Public works officials told the commissioners at their Feb. 3 meeting that one reason the temporary bridge is needed is that the crossing from the southeast to the southwest corner is about 300 feet -- the length of a football field. The bent alignment of Harmon through Las Vegas Boulevard is what makes the crossing significantly longer than the already wide crossings on other parts of the boulevard.

The length of the crossing is dangerous because it could strand pedestrians in the middle of the busy road, they said.

Erin Breen, a traffic safety expert at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, said the bridge is crucial for pedestrian safety. Even with the bridge, however, there would still be potential for problems, she said.

"It's 300 feet," she said. "Removing the pedestrians from the conflict with vehicles is of course preferable, always. The questions is, it's that old human nature question again, if it's possible for them to cross mid-block, they will try to do that."

Manning said his department will try to extend barricades as far as possible to funnel pedestrians onto the bridge.

Paul Brown, Southern Nevada director for the Progressive Leadership Alliance of Nevada, said the county appears to be making the best of a difficult situation. He said the story of the Harmon Avenue connector, however, provides a warning for current commissioners.

The 1994 decisions forced the county to spend a lot of time and money that might not have been necessary if the county had held onto the original right of way, he said.

"It is like many of those decision they've made that at the time favored someone with political clout and came back years later to bite us," Brown said. "This is one of those decisions that has come back to bite us hard.

"Steve Wynn was very persuasive with the county commission, as he was with a lot of folks. Unfortunately, it is the way that the county commission operated for too many years.

"Perhaps there's a change afoot, with at least some of the members of the commission. It's probably a good time to examine this, with Valentine's Day right around the corner. It was a sweetheart deal."

Woodbury, the commissioner who unsuccessfully battled the original decisions that bent Harmon through Las Vegas Boulevard, said the pedestrian bridge, compromises between public works and the property owners around the intersection, and the years of negotiations should not have been necessary.

"They should have been listening to public works way back when," he said.

Still, the road today is important, he said.

"Finally, we got the right of way back and we're able to get this project through," he said. "It has taken years longer. We had to work with all the surrounding property owners to find an alignment that would work.

"We had to find a compromise solution. Maybe it was not the ideal alignment, but it is a good alignment."

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