Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

Pacer withdraws Nevada move plans

In a move anticipated for months, a California company has withdrawn plans to move its corporate headquarters to Henderson, despite the city offering a $3.7 million discount for the 28-acre site.

Pacer Stacktrain, which specializes in arranging transportation for freight shipments, announced last summer that it would move from Concord, Calif., to Henderson. In August, the Henderson City Council, in a move to woo the company, unanimously agreed to cut the price of its land, appraised at $10 million, to only $6.3 million.

The deal has been in doubt since October when the proposed land sale was removed from a City Council agenda. Pacer executives told the city at the time that they were awaiting approval from its corporate parent, Pacer International.

That approval never came, said Bob Cooper, Henderson's economic development manager.

And now the pullout by Pacer comes as the Nevada Legislature considers a change in state law that would likely prevent Henderson from making the kind of land sale it had on the table with the California company, city officials said.

Tom Shurstad, president of Pacer Stacktrain, said the company, whose Concord lease expires in June 2006, plans to renew it for now. He cited the difficulty for uprooting families in explaining the company's decision to remain in Concord, which is northeast of Oakland.

"We have been mulling this over for quite a while and the key issue for us is the disruption to the employees at this point in time," Shurstad said. "We are just going to sit tight. Going to a new location in Nevada is losing the focus of this company. We are doing well today and we want to continue that."

The company, however, hasn't closed the door on moving in the future and Henderson would be high on the list if that happened, Shurstad said. Henderson went out of its way to put together a deal, he said.

"The city of Henderson had the welcome mat out," Shurstad said. I couldn't believe how well they handled it."

Cooper said he hasn't given up hope that Pacer may ultimately change its mind and decide to relocate to Henderson. He said there have been other examples such of Touro University and the University of Southern Nevada that have announced plans to come to Henderson, withdrawn them, and changed their plans again.

"If it is not the right timing, you have to be patient," Cooper said. "They could resurrect it at some point."

The company had been expected to employ as many as 500 people at its $80 million campus east of Valle Verde Drive in the Whitney Ranch area. It was to feature three office towers totaling about 300,000 square feet that would have provided enough room for as many as 1,000 employees, Cooper said. The company had considered building condominiums for its employees before opting for more office space instead.

Nearly 200 of the employees were expected to make between $85,000 and $100,000 a year. One city estimate based on having 350 employees touted the project as generating $4 million in local taxes and $1.3 million in state taxes in the first year.

Henderson worked with the company for months and facilitated a zone change on the property from residential and industrial use to a mixed-use commercial development. Mayor Jim Gibson said he isn't upset with Pacer Stacktrain officials and that company's interest in the property was genuine.

"I am of course disappointed because it was a significant employment opportunity for our city," Gibson said. "That is the nature of economic development. It is such that you have disappointments."

The site is considered attractive because it is one of the last properties in the area available for development.

Developers continue to be interested in the 28 acres but there are no plans to sell it at this time, city officials said. It's part of a 180-acre site the city paid $16.2 million in April 1997. The 28 acres was valued at $2.5 million at the time.

Earlier this year, Henderson traded 60 acres of the site as part of a 126-acre land exchange for the Wildhorse golf course. Most of the remaining acreage is designated for wetlands preservation and a park, said John Rinaldi, Henderson's property management and redevelopment manager.

Assembly Bill 312, which was approved by the Assembly and under consideration by the Senate, would require cities to auction property instead of selling it to a designated buyer. It would also prevent cities from offering the land for sale at a discounted price as was done by Henderson, said Assemblyman Scott Sibley, R-Las Vegas, the sponsor of the bill.

The bill was crafted in response to a developer exchanging public land near McCarran International Airport for huge profits.

In April, Henderson officials voiced objections to the bill during hearings before the Assembly Growth Committee. Henderson has extensive rules in its Charter describing how land can be exchanged. It allows land to be sold for less than its appraised value if there is an economic development benefit to the deal, city officials said. "There appears to be the potential for some problems," Cooper said of the legislation. "It would take away our ability to be flexible."

Cooper said a company like Pacer would be reluctant to go through the public process as it did in this case, hold public meetings and spend money, only to lose out at a public auction.

Officials said that could result in land going to the highest bidder for land speculation instead of a desire project that would create jobs.

Sibley acknowledged the way the bill is written that the Pacer deal couldn't happen. It has exceptions for government to government or government to nonprofit transactions, he said. The only exception for sales to developers would be if they included affordable housing, he said.

Amendments may be proposed that allow more exceptions but Sibley said he doesn't want any public land to be sold at a reduced cost, as Henderson has proposed. He said that can lead to sweetheart deals that shortchange taxpayers.

"I tend to have a problem with discounts offered on the land," Sibley said. "That makes me nervous. We want to rebuild the public trust, but at the same time we don't want to hurt economic development. We want to bring companies here, but we don't want to give land away."

Gibson said Henderson has conducted its land sale in public view by holding hearings and openly discussing the discount. He said he hopes what is ultimately passed doesn't impair the city's ability to make land deals that benefit the community.

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