County weighs policy on airport land deals

Stephen Curran

Wednesday, April 6, 2005 | 11:10 a.m.

Future land transactions on property once owned by McCarran International Airport would be better handled by a single Clark County agency overseeing all real estate deals in its jurisdiction, Clark County commissioners said Tuesday.

The commission on Tuesday began weighing a policy that would consolidate all bids to sell Aviation Department-owned land in a single county agency. Previous transactions have come under harsh scrutiny after complaints from residents about a deal between the airport and land broker Scott Gragson.

At their meeting this morning, commissioners unanimously approved centralizing the land disposal operations. Commissioners Yvonne Atkinson-Gates and Lynette Boggs McDonald were absent for the vote.

Clark County auditors, joined by the district attorney's office, the FBI and federal officials, have since launched a probe into the land deals. That audit, begun in early February is expected to take at least two months.

The proposed policy is expected to come before the commission in a hearing sometime next month, Commissioner Bruce Woodbury said. The move would end the airport's involvement in the transactions.

"The airport people are good at running the airport and they should be freed to do that," he said.

The county agency tapped to handle these transactions has not been determined, although it is likely to be the county's Real Property Management department, county spokesman Erik Pappa said.

In addition, sales would be limited to public auctions, with a "very narrow" exception for other government entities and nonprofit organizations that could likely buy the land at a reduced price, Woodbury said.

Many of the land sales in question have yielded almost four-fold profits when the buyers went to sell.

In other action, county officials said Tuesday they'll use a report from a citizen panel that studied rapid development in Southern Nevada to plan for more growth.

"Our challenge is to stay ahead of the curve, given that we're expected to add another 1 million people to our population over the next 20 years," Woodbury said.

After a year of study, the 17-member Clark County Growth Task Force called affordable housing the top priority in the Las Vegas area, along with development, air quality and transportation, and the timing of infrastructure installation.

High on the task force's list of six priorities and 21 separate recommendations was a greater emphasis on "mixed-use" development, a kind of community that more closely blends commercial and residential structures.

That recommendation prompted the commission to draft what became an 83-page ordinance better defining what it considered a mixed-use community, Commission Chairman Rory Reid said.

"We need to facilitate mixed-use developments to make sure it is done in appropriate places in the valley," he said.

Task force Chairman Leonard "Pat" Goodall said panelists found no magic solution to increasing demands for water, strained city and social services, decreased water and air quality, and skyrocketing housing costs.

"The best approach is a balanced one that takes economic, environmental and quality-of-life factors into consideration," said Goodall, a former University of Nevada, Las Vegas president. "Our goal was to identify a handful of key items that we thought were most important for the community and the commission to focus on."

The task force had no rulemaking authority. Panel members and commissioners called the 190-page report the beginning of a process to raise municipal and regional support for managing growth.

County officials said they were also considering packaging available land for development and working with the state and the U.S. Bureau of Land Management to help public, nonprofit and private builders develop affordable housing.

The Associated Press contributed to this story.