NEVADAN AT WORK: Executive returns to Las Vegas roots to build dreams

When most of his fellow college students were cramming for exams, Bart Jones was working on a deal between the World Bank and an African government.

While still an undergraduate at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas in the mid-1970s, Jones and his brother Steve helped their uncle Cliff Jones try to arrange a land deal with the Central African Republic. The World Bank was supposed to finance the project, which included millions of acres.

The Jones brothers were living history instead of studying it.

"Then Cuba invaded Angola, and the World Bank didn't want to do it. Robert McNamara was the president of the World Bank," Bart Jones recalled. "That was the first time Cuba was a mercenary army. Angola was next door to the Central African Republic."

This wasn't the way most students spent their college years. But Jones, the son of Jones Vargas law firm co-founder Herb Jones and nephew of Nevada political heavyweight and former lieutenant governor Cliff Jones, has never followed a traditional path.

Bart Jones, who's been with Merlin Contracting and Developing since 1994, decided early in life not to become a lawyer like his father and uncle. Instead, he became the Jones' family's only botanist. In the mid-1970s, he moved to Hawaii to farm macadamia nuts.

"I always wanted to be outdoors. Whether it was working on the farm in Hawaii or building homes now," said Jones, whose undergraduate degree emphasis was on botany and cultural anthropology.

Jones spent nearly 20 years in Hawaii, operating macadamia farming and candy businesses, managing the farms of others and building his own factory.

"I got into it at the right time," Jones said. "That was right when United Airlines started offering macadamia nuts on their flights, which made them really popular."

By 1994, Herb Jones was close to 80 and developing countries were taking over macadamia nut farming. Bart had gotten married and wanted to be closer to his father.

Bart's brother Steve, with whom Bart had originally invested in the Hawaiian venture, had started Merlin Contracting in Las Vegas. Steve's wife, Ann, was another former macadamia farm investor, so the Jones family was excited about another business collaboration.

"Steve generously invited me to come work for him at Merlin Contracting, his growing custom-home building company," he said. "That year, 1994, (wife) Cory and I moved to Las Vegas and I joined Merlin Contracting. After a few years and more company expansion, Steve invited me to become a partner."

Herb Jones died in 2008, at age 93.

Herb and Cliff were not Bart's only famous Las Vegas relatives. His aunt Florence Lee Jones -- Cliff's and Herb's sister -- was the first female journalist at the Las Vegas Review-Journal in 1933.

"She told me about her first assignment. It was a very famous murder trial," Bart Jones recounted. "Technically, she was hired to do fluff, and the only reason she got to do it was because the men reporters were busy reporting the news of the day. There were all these weird, salacious details that women were not supposed to be aware of, or a party to, involved in this murder."

Question: What was it like growing up in a prominent Las Vegas family like the Jones family?

Answer: When I was born we lived on Sixth (Street) and Oakey (Boulevard) where ours was a typical family with five children living in a 1,200-square-foot, three-bedroom, one-and-one half-bathroom track house, just like everyone else on the block. We didn't feel any different than the other kids who all came out every summer afternoon for a blockwide hide-and-seek game.

It was the '50s, and everyone's home had a hard-working crusty swamp cooler fighting the heat. From the first grade at John S. Park Elementary to the sixth grade at West Charleston Elementary, everyone in our family walked to school, and then in junior high we walked or took the bus.

At Clark High School, my friends' fathers were Nevada Test Site scientists, casino floormen, teachers, bankers and merchants. Las Vegas then, as now, was a melting pot. No one in our family felt special or prominent because everyone's parents came from somewhere else and the code of the Old West was alive and well in Las Vegas "a man makes his own mark."

Question: What are the advantages to being part of the Jones family when doing business in Las Vegas today?

Answer: I am extremely fortunate that my father and his family were such honorable people. A lot of these people knew my father and we do things the old Vegas way: your handshake is your bond. So, we've built over $50 million worth of custom homes without contracts. Because in the early days, Vegas was small and your word was very important.

Question: Your aunt and uncle were both in the newspaper business. What memories do you have of them?

Answer: I have a vivid memory of going into the Review-Journal, not the current building, as a small boy. Auntie Flo, as we called Florence Lee Jones Cahlan, and Uncle Johnny -- John F. Cahlan -- took me into a cluttered room and showed me the type-set boards. They explained how men would quickly arrange all these metal letters in the mirror images of the newspaper pages, ... Auntie Flo always carried 3-by-5 cards in her purse. She kept all her notes and details of the lives of Southern Nevadans on those cards.

Question: After spending about two decades farming in Hawaii, are you planning any more out-of-state ventures or are you back in Las Vegas to stay?

Answer: I'm back in Las Vegas to stay. My wife, Cory, and I love our home near Buffalo (Drive) and Sahara (Avenue), where we have a neighborhood full of friends. I'm the president of our homeowner's association and Cory knows all of our 79 neighbors on a first-name basis. Cory was raised in Monterey, Calif., where her family still lives and where we plan to stay connected as a balance to our Las Vegas desert home.

Contact reporter Valerie Miller at
vmiller@lvbusinesspress.com or 702-387-5286.