Legislation aims to streamline permit process at NLV industrial park

By Katie Ann McCarver (contact)

Sunday, July 16, 2023 | 2 a.m.

A new bill in the U.S. Senate is designed to help spearhead development at a North Las Vegas industrial site with thousands of acres of land, where for many years businesses have struggled to settle or grow because of a complex permitting process.

Businesses that currently hope to build in the decades-old Apex Industrial Park must go through a difficult process of obtaining permits for sewer, gas, power and more from the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), which controls corridors throughout the area, those seeking to develop the site say.

The Apex Area Technical Corrections Act, introduced by Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, D-Nev., seeks to streamline that process.

“The way the law’s written at the federal level, each individual business — each individual company — has to make that request to the BLM,” Cortez Masto told members of the media this month, when she met with stakeholders at the site. “We’ve got to change that. It’s taking too long to just get the infrastructure.”

The process usually takes at least 18 months to three years, said Lisa Cole, vice president of Land Development Associates (LDA), which acts as a supplier and a middleman with the BLM for businesses in the Apex Industrial Park.

Legislation would be the “light at the end of the tunnel” when it comes to speeding the permit process at Apex, Cole said, adding that her company has taken several steps to do so over the years but to little or no avail.

Having worked on Apex for more than two decades, Cole said it’s been cool to see contractors, the city of North Las Vegas and other entities begin to work together in a way that will hopefully bring business in more effectively and efficiently.

“They’re actually doing it in a master plan kind of way, which is what was supposed to happen,” she said. “So it’s been exciting to see that.”

Current law makes it difficult for businesses in Apex to get the necessary permits from different entities in a streamlined way, and this new piece of legislation will hopefully bring that process from up to three years down to less than one, said Weston Adams, president and CEO of Western States Contracting, a contractor and builder at the property.

“That’s our biggest hurdle,” said Adams, who noted that the same permit process for many of Apex’s peers is 30 days, not three years. “And any time that we get to speed that up and take that process and pare it down helps us just develop faster and create more jobs.”

His team spearheaded three major developments in one area of Apex, Adams said, including a fully operational Air Liquide hydrogen production facility and a 1.5 million-square-foot distribution center for Kroger, which is slated to begin operations in September.

Improvements to that portion of Apex have been in the works for about seven years now.

“The process was long and arduous and quite expensive,” Adams said. “And time is money.”

Of the 7,000 acres of developable land at Apex, about 1,000 have been developed and another 1,000 are under development — including a Crocs distribution center set to open in October, a CarMax storage and auction facility, and nearly a dozen other projects.

Manufacturing, warehousing and distribution are priorities when it comes to diversifying Nevada’s economy beyond gaming and entertainment, which Cortez Masto said was important in the event of an economic downturn.

Another major benefit of streamlining the permit process at Apex, which is off Interstate 15 at U.S. Highway 93 in North Las Vegas, is that bringing business to the site creates jobs, she said.

“There’s great jobs for our families, and that’s what this is about,” Cortez Masto said. “And then, at the end of the day, it’s good for Nevada’s economy.”