Clark County OKs Metro building purchase

Clark County commissioners on Tuesday finalized the purchase of the Metropolitan Police Department’s headquarters for $208.3 million.

County officials estimate that the move will save about $248.2 million in future leasing costs associated with the 27-year agreement between the developer and the county, reached in 2008.

Metro officials settled into the new 373,327-square-foot complex in 2011, which allowed them to put key personnel and offices in a consolidated location at Martin Luther King Boulevard and Alta Drive.

The county is purchasing the complex from HQ Metro, the limited liability company that owns the property through a partnership with Mark L. Fine &Associates. Under the agreement, the three-building complex costs $205 million and another $3.3 million in other fees and costs — a $208.3 million deal.

“This is the culmination of many months of work,” County Manager Don Burnette said.

The county entered into the 27-year agreement with the developers for the construction and long-term lease of the facility in 2008. It costs nearly $1.09 million a month to lease the complex from the owners, with the money coming from the budget of Metro, which subleases the facility.

Under the approved plan, Metro will continue to make lease payments to the county, which would go toward paying off the purchase.

In about 16 years, the county’s cost of the purchase would be paid off from the lease payments received from Metro’s budget. The $248.2 million in savings — without the agreement — would have gone toward the monthly payments for the rest of the original 27-year lease term. The lease payments would have increased 2 percent annually over the life of the lease.

Officials had planned the project as a way to centralize much of the department, including detective bureaus, records and fingerprinting. Before the new complex opened, Las Vegas police operated out of the old Las Vegas City Hall, which the city vacated when the new City Hall opened in 2012.

The $208.3 million deal is a compromise between the county and developer.

Under the original agreement with the developer, the county had the option to buy the property after three years for either $167.4 million or fair market value, whichever is larger. But county officials and the developer were unable to agree on the fair market value after eight months of negotiations with input from appraisers.

Michael Chapman, a private attorney who represented the county, said the range of values was from about $170 million to $250 million. The parties reached a compromise in settlement talks with help from Bruce Markell, a former Las Vegas federal bankruptcy judge who is now a law professor at Florida State University.

Markell had recommended a compromise that ranged from $205 million to $210 million.

Burnette said the outcome was a “fair settlement amount” and better than going to arbitration.

Without the compromise, the two parties would have gone before an arbitrator for a binding decision in October.

Contact Ben Botkin at bbotkin@reviewjournal.com or 702-405-9781. Find him on Twitter: @BenBotkin1.