Las Vegas land swap would pave way for spacious new library in underserved area

By Conor Shine

Wednesday, April 15, 2015 | 2 a.m.

After years of waiting, an east Las Vegas neighborhood is finally getting a library branch to call its own as part of a complicated land swap being voted on by the City Council today that will also open up a new, roomier building downtown for the Las Vegas Natural History Museum.

The proposed deal calls for the city to give a vacant six-acre parcel at the corner of Sunrise Avenue and 28th Street plus $7 million to the Las Vegas-Clark County Library District for the construction of a new branch in the underserved area.

"It's going to be a first-class, large library," said City Councilman Bob Coffin, who represents the eastern part of Las Vegas. "It will rival the very best, as good as anything in Summerlin."

In return, the city will receive the 111,400-square-foot library building located at 833 Las Vegas Blvd. North. The space is currently home to a library branch and previously housed the Discovery Children's Museum. When the museum moved to its new location at Symphony Park in 2013, the spacious digs proved unnecessary for the library's operations.

By moving the downtown branch out of the sparsely populated area, Coffin said it will be much more accessible to residents who will make use of its services.

"It's a heck of a marriage," he said, of the land deal between the city and the library district. "This will bring a lot of knowledge to people who are thirsting for it."

The new library will bring a much needed amenity to the east side of Las Vegas, which Coffin said "has not received the attention in the last couple of decades that it should have."

"It's a lower income area," he said. "The library is good for people of all ages, but especially young people who don't have access to a lending library."

The move will also have a positive impact on downtown, clearing the way for the natural history museum to move across the street into the vacated building on Las Vegas Boulevard, giving the nonprofit room to expand and properly display its exhibits.

The final piece of the puzzle is the current building being occupied by the natural history museum located at 900 Las Vegas Blvd. North in the city's cultural corridor. Once the museum moves out, the building could become part of the city's plans to redevelop Cashman Center in its quest to bring downtown revitalization north of the I-515 highway.

"The future of Cashman Center will have a big bearing on what happens to that corridor," said Deputy City Manager Scott Adams, who helped lead negotiations on the land swap. "What happens and how soon that happens will be a real catalyst for connecting that area to the old city hall where Zappos is at."

No formal plans for the future of Cashman Center have been approved, and much will depend on whether the Las Vegas 51s baseball team moves out of the stadium there to a new ballpark that's been proposed in the Summerlin area. If the 51s move out, retail, housing or other cultural attractions have all been discussed as potential fits for the aging Cashman Center.

In the meantime, the current downtown library will remain open at its Las Vegas Boulevard location until the $13.8 million east branch is built, which is scheduled for completion by October 2017. There is a slight chance the final location of the eastside branch could change, with the library district in discussions with the city and federal government about acquiring a different 8.5-acre site owned by the regional housing authority a few miles north at Bonanza Road and 28th Street. That site would be located even closer to the neighborhood's population center, but faces tricky negotiations that might not come to fruition and would require a separate approval from the City Council at a later date.