School district’s new digs turn some heads

By Emily Richmond (contact)

Wednesday, June 1, 2005 | 11:06 a.m.

A 90-minute tour of the Clark County School District's $14.5 million new office building Tuesday revealed a handsome lobby with marble flooring, spacious offices with private bathrooms and an "executive suite" featuring leopard-print carpeting.

The purchase of the four-story building at 5100 W. Sahara Ave. has yielded more than just 66,645 square feet of office space, as well as the furniture, lamps and decorative knick-knacks the seller threw in as part of the deal.

There has also been controversy as some critics questioned the necessity and usefulness of the building as well as whether the purported savings will disappear if costly renovations and remodeling are approved by the School Board down the road.

"Are we here to say we're sorry it looks good? Well, no," said Clark County Schools Superintendent Carlos Garcia, who will resign in July for an executive position with textbook giant McGraw-Hill Cos. "Maybe having a place like this will help the district lure some really great candidates to take my job."

The district's "Ed Shed," the Edward Greer Education Center on Flamingo Road near Eastern Avenue, was built in 1964 when the district had a student enrollment of 25,000. Garcia noted that the district already has more employees than that and nearly 300,000 students are expected when the new school year begins in August.

"We had an opportunity to buy a beautiful building at a savings to taxpayers over the long run," Garcia said. "Lots of other public entities in this valley are building new places for themselves to handle growth. Well, nobody's growing faster than this school district."

The School District bought the building because officials said they got a good price and said the building would save the cost of rent at other facilities. School officials called the building an investment and said they believe they could eventually sell the building at a profit.

But critics attacking the purchase have labeled the building as "posh."

The second floor includes 25 individual offices, several large meeting rooms and a small kitchenette. The third floor is similar in its layout but also has two offices that share a private bathroom with a glass-stall shower.

But it's the top floor, particularly its executive suite, that has drawn the bulk of the scrutiny.

The walls are papered in dark maroon patterned with tiny gold stars. The elevator lobby has four chairs upholstered in jungle print. The same pattern is used in the carpets and furniture in the executive suite, which also boasts a sunken conversation area and a massive desk that had to be lifted in by a crane because it was too big for either the elevator or the stairwell.

The fourth floor offices still bear the name of the prior occupant: Townes Telecommunications Inc. With headquarters in Lewisville, Ark., the company specializes in telephone service for rural communities, according to its corporate Web site.

The company's founder, Larry Townes, named the building after his son, who died several years ago. The building's name -- the Larry Glenn Townes Building -- won't be changed, district officials have said.

There are also no immediate plans to redecorate, including taking out elements that some people might consider too showy for school district offices, Garcia said.

"Is this stuff nicer than anything we would have bought for ourselves -- absolutely," Garcia said. "But we're not going to jackhammer out the marble floors just to make some naysayers happy. We could have a tag sale and sell everything, but do you know how much used office furniture goes for? And then we'd just have to turn around and buy stuff to put in its place, so where's the real savings there?"

Buying the building will end the need for most of the scattering of offices around the Las Vegas Valley leased by the district at a cost of nearly $1 million annually, said Walt Rulffes, deputy superintendent of operations.

The building will be paid for using funds set aside by the School Board for non-school construction projects. No money from the district's general fund will go toward the purchase, Rulffes said.

The purchase may set back plans for a new technology campus and headquarters for the the district's School Police. Those construction projects, already approved by the board, were supposed to be paid for out of the same pool of funds, Rulffes said.

Some district departments may also relocate to the West Sahara building from the Greer Center. A professional space planner will help make those decisions, Rulffes said.

Built in 1996, the property includes a separate parking garage and a first-floor annex that could conceivably be converted into a School Board assembly room. The cost of remodeling and equipping such a space was estimated at $4.2 million in an earlier memo to the School Board regarding the proposed purchase.

Charles Thompson, a retired Las Vegas attorney who has been researching the building's purchase, questioned claims by district officials that it would cost at least $19 million to build a similarly sized facility. Thompson also pointed out that Rulffes' own memo to the School Board was far from a glowing endorsement of the deal, noting a lack of parking spaces and little room for future expansion at the site.

School Board member Mary Beth Scow, who also participated in the tour, said she believed it was a smart buy.

"When you walk through here you see that it's completely empty, we don't have to wait for anyone's lease to run out and we can move people in as soon as we figure out who's going where," Scow said.

Ted Jelen, a professor of political science at UNLV, said explanations of square-footage savings and long-term benefits of property ownership are unlikely to change the perceptions of the sternest critics.

"Any sign of extravagance will raise eyebrows," Jelen said. "But the facts appear to be that they (the district) got a pre-existing structure for less than market value, which is quite an accomplishment given today's real estate boom. I can't imagine the School Board ever authorizing the purchase of a marble lobby, but if it's already there, so be it."