Weekly stands firm, but project extension OK’d

Thursday, July 22, 2004 | 9:27 a.m.

The anguish on Las Vegas City Councilman Lawrence Weekly's face was pronounced.

Weekly was torn between continuing to champion a proposed West Las Vegas revitalization project on city-donated land that had experienced numerous delays during the last four years or getting off a bad pony that constituents had told him he was riding down a path to nowhere.

On top of that, as the discussion dragged on for two hours at Wednesday's City Council meeting, Weekly was pressured by Mayor Oscar Goodman and other council members to reconsider his position that he would not support another extension for the proposed Edmond Town Center retail development at the southwest corner of H Street and Owens Avenue.

Members of the Nucleus/WSA Management development team implored Weekly not to give up on them because the 20-acre project was "almost at the brink of success" -- a project they boasted would bring 250 permanent jobs of at least $8 an hour to the economically stagnant neighborhood and generate $22 million in retail sales and $1.54 million in sales tax.

"The last thing I want to see is this project fail," Weekly said, fumbling for his words. "I am at a point of being extremely frustrated with this project. ... It is not going to have my support."

In a rare occurrence, the council went against the wishes of their colleague in whose ward the project would be located and voted 6-1 for another six-month extension for the proposed $55 million development -- but not without stern warnings and added conditions.

Councilman Larry Brown told the development team it would take "an act of God" to get another extension vote from him.

Goodman, in addition to telling the development team that $8 an hour translated to just a $14,000-plus annual salary, added three more conditions in the form of what he called "drop-dead" deadlines:

-- A letter by 5 p.m. Friday from a financial institution stating that the funding for the project is in place.

-- $80,000 in a good faith deposit by 5 p.m. Friday to go with the $70,000 the developer originally gave in good faith.

-- The pouring of concrete on the site by Oct. 5, a deadline the development team pledged to meet.

Goodman dispensed with the custom of asking the developer if the additional conditions were acceptable.

Failure to meet any of those conditions, Goodman said, would result in the project being in default, which would mean the city would take back the donated land -- a move that began earlier this month when the developer missed the July 7 deadline for pouring concrete and went into default.

Although Weekly refused to budge on his stance, he told fellow council members if they were willing to give the developer another chance he would not hold it against them.

Weekly told the development team's chief John Edmond that if the project was built, he would call a news conference to publicly apologize to Edmond for bailing out on it.

The developer's expected completion date is June 1, well after its original February 2003 expected completion.