Las Vegas councilman criticizes funding plan for $25 million parking garage

Las Vegas may soon take out $45 million in bonds to build what was billed as a $25 million parking garage.

Last month, a divided City Council approved plans for a tourism improvement district to pay for the garage, which was once meant to support an even more contro­versial $200 million, 24,000-seat stadium on 13 acres of former Union Pacific railroad yard in Symphony Park.

That plan would have seen the city float enough Sales Tax Anticipation Revenue bonds to build the 1,200-space garage just west of The Smith Center for the Performing Arts.

City officials plan to pay off those obligations largely through sales taxes collected at Las Vegas Premium Outlets North — a nearby outlet mall expansion expected to open later this month.

But a new plan set for a vote May 20 could see the city pay down nearly double its original debt load through the same repayment model, tacking funding for $20 million in surprise road, bridge and sewer infrastructure improvements onto the tourism district-backed bond tab first discussed in April.

It remains unclear why officials didn’t roll those improvements into its first City Council-approved tourism district pitch.

Backup documents attached to the new funding resolution suggest the move will allow the city to “reimburse itself” for earlier Symphony Park infrastructure expenditures with proceeds from the sale of its $20 million in newly proposed debt. Las Vegas has poured some $100 million into similar infrastructure projects at the mostly empty park over the past decade.

City Councilman Bob Beers, an outspoken critic of the city’s tourism district-funded parking garage plan, said he was “way concerned” about the city’s latest move.

Beers, a certified public accountant, said officials may have always planned to take out more bonds than needed to build the parking garage.

The real question, he said, is how or whether they plan to pay them back. He suspects the city overstepped its legal bounds in building the district around a mall expansion already in the works and said he wasn’t at all sure that mall would provide enough tax revenue to pay off the city’s ballooning debt package.

“It depends completely on how much sales tax we’re able to capture,” he said. “We haven’t seen what sales tax is generated from the outlet mall as it exists today.

“I don’t think there’s an end to the city’s capacity to spend money in Symphony Park.”

Several long-planned Symphony Park retail developments are expected to contribute about one-third of the annual tourism district tax revenue needed to pay down Las Vegas’ new parking garage and park infrastructure improvements. Estimates of districtwide tax collections range as high as $66 million over the next four years, part of a package of revenue estimates based on Symphony Park growth projections Beers and other City Council members have called “absurd.”

Critics of the city’s original parking garage funding plan have said that Las Vegas has long agreed to offer 1,200 parking spaces to The Smith Center for the Performing Arts, one of only two developments that have materialized in Symphony Park since it opened for business in 2005.

They feel that the county and the state — which both stand to lose out on sales tax dollars siphoned off by Las Vegas’ new tourism district — should not be subsidizing a garage to benefit a tenant in the city-owned park.

City Manager Betsy Fretwell said last month the city “followed state law” in developing its tourism district-backed parking garage financing plan.

Fretwell said then that Las Vegas could use any excess proceeds from its parking garage bonds on roads or sewer drainage improvements to help further encourage Symphony Park development but did not hint at the possibility the city could nearly double the size of its original bond offering.

She did not return requests for comment on the mechanics of the city’s beefed-up building plan.

Chief Financial Officer Mark Vincent also could not be reached.

Contact James DeHaven at jdehaven@reviewjournal.com or 702-477-3839. Follow him on Twitter: @JamesDeHaven.