Goodman hopes Big Apple takes a bite of Las Vegas

Sito Negron

Wednesday, June 30, 2004 | 11:15 a.m.

Responses from investors and builders during a trip to New York City to sell downtown Las Vegas helped solidify a strategy of finding a single developer to work on the 61 acres owned by the city of Las Vegas.

"We struggled for several months talking about the concept of a single developer versus the city coordinating multiple developers," City Manager Doug Selby said.

"Out of some of our latest meeting ... we concluded it's probably in the city's best interests to try to put this in the hands of a master developer."

Selby and Mayor Oscar Goodman spent time earlier this week giving presentations to the Related Cos., which already is investing in the World Market Center, the furniture mart being built downtown; a group of investment bankers, organized by downtown casino operator Barrick Gaming Corp., at the Park Avenue Racquet and Tennis Club; casino and real-estate mogul Donald Trump; and Alan Greenberg, chairman of Bear, Stearns & Co.

"I talk about us being poised to go to a level that we don't even know where it's leading, other than that it will be limited only by our imaginations," Goodman said. "I showed my enthusiasm; it's contagious. And at the end of the day people felt very confident ... they couldn't go wrong."

Goodman said that while he received no specific commitments -- "I was not there to deal," he said -- the Manhattan meetings had a different value. "If they (Bear Stearns) say something positive about us, it has a reverberating effect."

The most immediate task for the city is to send out a round of requests for proposals, Goodman said. "We're going to be on a fast track right now," he said. "The market is ripe."

Selby said that his staff will meet today to develop an outline for developers, and hopes to complete that within 30 days. He said the city would like to have responses within 90 days from "the top two or three" developers identified by the city.

The city has committed more than $20 million to install infrastructure, but has not yet sold the bonds. Selby said that the developer likely would not pick up that cost.

As for the estimated $2 million already committed by the city for design of streets and underground utilities, "The money hasn't been wasted, because it gives us the opportunity to say 'This is what we want, what is your proposal to provide it?"' he said

Goodman said that the future of the 61 acres may not include the Cleveland Clinic, the internationally known medical outfit upon which he previously has said he's pinning much of his hopes.

"We have to find out where they are, and with our own medical community," Goodman said. "All the developers we talked to want an urban village, but we want a medical center."

But, he said, if the medical center cannot work at the 61 acres, "It's going to happen, and the place is probably the least important (element)."

"We are in a unique position in that no other city ... has 61 acres they can develop from a tabula rasa point of view, where it's blank."