Garage bonds to pay for City Hall project

Sito Negron

Friday, Jan. 9, 2004 | 9:36 a.m.

Las Vegas will try to pay for a City Hall expansion by redirecting proceeds from $25 million in bonds originally meant for a downtown parking garage.

The procedure, approved by the City Council on Wednesday, came after a review of changing development plans indicated that a planned parking garage might not make the money initially predicted.

Mark Vincent, the city's finance director, said the parking garage was to take advantage of two projects planned near the proposed lot at Third and Bonneville, both of which now won't happen there.

One, the Irwin Molasky IRS building, changed locations to be adjacent to the city-owned 61-acre parcel west of the downtown railroad tracks. That project broke ground this week. The other fell through, Vincent said.

Together, those projects would have led to the lease of about 750 and the parking garage's 1,000 spaces. In addition to those projects falling through, and the long delays in opening the Regional Justice Center, several other new projects that included public parking spaces were announced.

Those projects were "not in the works when we did our original analysis. As a result our demand shifted significantly," said Deputy City Manager Steve Houchens. "But we had $25 million in bond proceeds. It made a lot of sense, I think, and still makes a lot of sense to redirect those funds."

The city received approval from the Clark County Debt Management Commission Dec. 5, and still must seek approval from the bond insurer to amend the ordinance that sold the bonds.

It's something the city has not done since he's worked for it, said Vincent. Under the initial plan, the bonds would have been paid off with parking revenue. If the money is used to pay for the expansion of City Hall, however, consolidated tax revenue will have to be used to pay off the debt.

Nevertheless, Vincent said, "the public should be pleased we recognized a change that needed to be made. It would be worse if the garage was built and sitting empty, with no revenue to pay the debt service. We have this other need that's more pressing that will actually save the city some money in terms of consolidating services from places we're now leasing."

The city still needs to acquire some of the land needed for the addition, which is part of a long-term plan that builds on the city "campus" spread throughout downtown but centered at City Hall, on Stewart between Fourth and Las Vegas Boulevard.

"We pay in excess of half a million (dollars a year) for leased property, and will have to pay more if we don't expand soon because we're running out of space at City Hall," said Houchens.

That money can be used to help pay the debt on the $25 million in bonds although it will not cover the whole cost and tax revenue will have to cover the rest.

But, said Houchens, "we were going to have to issue these bonds to expand City Hall one way or the other, so the cost was not unanticipated."