NLV: Give us your poor, unloved, teeming industries

By Mike Trask

Thursday, July 24, 2008 | 2 a.m.

To glimpse a slice of Southern Nevada’s future, we head out of town on northbound Interstate 15, well beyond the big NASCAR track, to the point where Las Vegas fades from your rearview mirror.

We’re 20 miles from the Strip, and only open desert lies ahead. Take U.S. 93 north to Ely, but we won’t go that far.

We’re driving to the farthest reaches of North Las Vegas.

Yes, the city now extends this far, thanks to a recent annexation of nearly 13,000 acres of land. It’s out here where North Las Vegas hopes to rejuvenate the Apex Industrial Park, a struggling, 20-year effort to congregate not-in-my-back-yard industry so far out of town nobody will complain.

It’s precisely the kind of project North Las Vegas, hungry for economic growth, is happy to claim.

This annexation may trigger the rebirth of Apex. But it has even greater implications for North Las Vegas, which continues to struggle for big-city credibility despite being one of the fastest-growing places in the country.

Development at Apex complex has stalled with just a few lonely businesses, including an asphalt company, a limestone mining operation and a gas-fired power plant.

Clark County had bigger hopes when it created Apex after an explosion at a rocket fuel plant in Henderson killed two people in 1988. The county wanted to relegate dangerous and unappetizing industry to this faraway land.

But not much industry came.

That brings us to Tuesday when, inside an air-conditioned reception tent at Apex out in the desert, officials were trumpeting a new message.

“We think from now on out it’s going to be nothing but good times,” said Dave Carver, president of Apex Industrial Park Inc.

Carver and a fleet of dignitaries had assembled for the groundbreaking of Mountain View Industrial Park, a section of Apex that promises in 10 years to have 40 million square feet of industrial buildings and commercial space. Also planned: a petroleum storage terminal and a sales lot for buses.

North Las Vegas has annexed most of Apex, where development has been stifled by lack of water. The city says it can deliver water to the site.

The city created a special improvement district to float a bond for at least $25 million to connect its water lines to Apex in the next two years. In return, businesses at the site will pay a slightly higher tax rate to help repay the bonds.

The payoff for the city: more jobs for the 250,000 people projected to move to the city in the next 20 years.

It will diversify Southern Nevada beyond roulette tables and magicians.

One day, this place may produce tangible products, not just vapid memories and regrets.

For all the back-patting in an air-conditioned tent in the middle of the desert this week, the real celebration may not be held for years, when nowhere becomes somewhere.