Mayor talks mostly about rapid growth

Jennifer Knight

Friday, Jan. 23, 2004 | 11:21 a.m.

The mayor of the nation's second-fastest growing city focused on one subject during his state of the city speech Thursday: growth.

In his 30-minute address to about 600 people, North Las Vegas Mayor Mike Montandon sent a clear message: If you want to own property in his city, buy now because land is going quickly.

"If I could give one bit of advice to businesses considering locating in North Las Vegas, it's get it now; the costs of land will only increase each passing year," Montandon said at Texas Station, the city's largest employer.

The city's annual report appears to bear him out. In 2003, the total assessed value of property in North Las Vegas reached $2.7 billion, up from $2.3 billion in 2002. Those numbers show a sharp increase from 2001 and 2002 when the assessed value had dropped.

Montandon said that land in his city is still plentiful, for the time being. The city has developed only 30 percent of its available land so far and estimates there will be no more room for build-outs by 2020. Once that happens, the city's population will jump from 147,877 residents to more than half a million residents, he said.

Montandon said the city is relying on the release of land from the Bureau of Land Management to aide expansion efforts. A public auction of 2,300 acres of land is expected to happen by the end of the year.

Another sign of growth is construction. Building permits in 2003 increased 50.3 percent from the previous year.

Montandon attributed the fast pace of construction to the Aliante development, a partnership between Del Webb and American Nevada, a company owned by the Greenspun family, owners of the Las Vegas Sun. The 240-acre development will include commercial property, a hotel-casino and about 7,500 homes.

Montandon also listed some public projects under way in the city, including:

City coffers were cut from $14 million in fiscal year 2002-2003 to $9.1 million in fiscal year 2003-2004 because of capital improvement projects, Montandon said.

Thursday's speech featured a professionally produced video that looked like a movie trailer, candy bars, a CD-ROM and a slick 26-page report on city finance. Cost for those extras was estimated at $15,000, not including price of lunch.

In comparison, Las Vegas recently spent more than $10,000 on Mayor Oscar Goodman's state of the city speech.

Peter DeMangus, chairman of the North Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce, said in order to keep pace with growth the city needs to stay on top of building new roads, fixing old ones, redeveloping older areas of town and diversifying businesses.

"When you have these community projects, traffic creates a problem," DeMangus said. "I think (the city) is doing the best they can though."

While Montandon hit on the city's goal of attracting more high-tech businesses and the need for an educated workforce, there was no mention in his speech about plans by the University of Nevada, Las Vegas to build a new campus in North Las Vegas.

The city council has reserved 640 acres for UNLV to build the campus but the project is still in its infancy.

Mark Lefkowitz, co-owner of Power Reality, said: "There are so many issues there's no way to address everything but overall (the speech) was good."

North Las Vegas City Councilman Robert Eliason also gave the speech high marks overall.

"I would say growth is a challenge," Eliason said. "Things like making the permit process quicker and speeding things along in the planning commission would help."