Southern Nevada running out of big chunks of developable land, officials say
July 15, 2016 - 6:43 am

Highway 93 heads towards Interstate 15 near the Apex Industrial Park Thursday, Oct. 23, 2014. (Sam Morris/Las Vegas Review-Journal)

The Love's Travel Stop that anchors the Apex Commercial Center North section of the Apex Industrial Park is seen Thursday, Oct. 23, 2014. (Sam Morris/Las Vegas Review-Journal)

The Tesla Motors showroom exterior in Las Vegas is shown on Tuesday, April 5, 2016. (Joshua Dahl/Las Vegas Review-Journal)

A for sale sign is seen near the Apex Industrial Park Thursday, Oct. 23, 2014. (Sam Morris/Las Vegas Review-Journal)

Vehicles travel along U.S. Highway 93 at Apex on Wednesday, Dec. 9, 2015. Gov. Brian Sandoval will announce Thursday in Las Vegas that the electric car maker Faraday Future will build its $1 billion auto factory at Apex in North Las Vegas. (Jeff Scheid/ Las Vegas Review-Journal) Follow @jlscheid

A tanker truck passes a sign, Wednesday, Dec. 9, 2015, near were the proposed Faraday Future auto plant will be built. Gov. Brian Sandoval will announce Thursday in Las Vegas that the electric car maker will build its $1 billion auto factory at Apex in North Las Vegas. (Jeff Scheid/ Las Vegas Review-Journal) Follow @jlscheid

NV Energy's Chuck Lenzie Generating Station is seen behind the Love's Travel Stop that anchors the Apex Commercial Center North section of the Apex Industrial Park Thursday, Oct. 23, 2014. (Sam Morris/Las Vegas Review-Journal)

The Tesla Motors showroom in Las Vegas is shown on Tuesday, April 5, 2016. (Joshua Dahl/Las Vegas Review-Journal)

A Tesla electric car is seen charging before the dedication first electric car charging station along U.S. Highway 95 Tuesday, March 1, 2016, in Beatty. The station is the fist of many planned charging facilities throughout the state. (David Becker/Las Vegas Review-Journal) Follow @davidjaybecker

Traffic moves past the main gate of the Tesla gigafactory in the Tahoe-Reno Industrial Center, east of Sparks, Nev. on Wednesday, Feb. 3, 2016. The approximately 10 million square foot lithium-ion battery facility can be seen at center rear. (Cathleen Allison/Las Vegas Review-Journal)
Southern Nevada is running out of big chunks of land that can be turned into job-creating hubs, local land development officials believe.
“If you and I got in the car someday, and we just drove around in a big circle around our community, we’d look and say, ‘Look at all this land everywhere’, right?’ Well, say I want to put up a store, a factory or something like that. So, you’d say, ‘Put the damn thing right here, or anywhere.’ Well, it turns out that’s simply not true,” said Alan Schlottmann, a Las Vegas economist.
Schlottman worked on a study commissioned by the commercial real estate development association, known as NAIOP Southern Nevada, which found the region needs an additional 12,700 acres of land available in order to meet the governor’s goals for economic development in target industries including health care, manufacturing and information technology in 2034.
“It’s not like putting up a little grocery store,” Shlottman said. Those types of industries need “fairly large parcels to develop, and if you look at the number of large parcels in Southern Nevada it’s surprisingly limited.”
Only three of the top 13 sites, identified by several economic research organizations, for industrial employment opportunity areas in Clark County exceed 150 acres: the 900 plus acres that make up the speedway/Northeast Industrial area, located in North Las Vegas; the 359 acres that make up a site known as the “South LTA Site”, which is just minutes from the Henderson Executive Airport; and the 6,814 acre APEX/Mountain View Industrial Park, just outside the Valley.
“If Tesla said, ‘Hey, let’s move to down to Southern Nevada tomorrow,’ you don’t have any place to put them,” Shlottman said. “There’s not a 2,500-acre site in our community, which is weird.”
The Bureau of Land Management, which manages the 81.1 percent of the federally owned land in Nevada, is in the process of drafting a proposed final Resource Management Plan, a long-term road map of how to use public lands.
The bureau released a draft proposal of its RMP in October 2013, which Mike Shohet, president of NAIOP Southern Nevada, said raised some red flags.
“It didn’t add a lot more land to be disposed of, or to be put into the hands of local jurisdictions or public investors, developers, or other organizations,” Shohet said. “It’s been a problem for a long time, but we’re at a point now where infill parcels (land that can be used for new construction) are becoming so expensive.”
Land near the 215 Beltway, for example, is getting so pricey that housing is becoming the only possible use for that land, he said, because an industrial type of company would not be able to afford the land as currently priced.
Gayle Marrs-Smith, field manager for the Las Vegas field office of BLM, said her team is working to produce a final RMP proposal by late September.
“We’re taking input and comments from the public and were addressing them and making revisions to the RMP so it can be published as a proposed final draft,” Marrs-Smith said.
The draft released in 2013 also did not reflect congressional legislation that will expand the amount of acreage available to sell at a land auction, per the Southern Nevada Public Land Management Act.
The NAIOP report will not be received as an official comment, since it was not submitted during the official comment period, Marrs-Smith said. “We haven’t had a chance to look at it (the report), and we haven’t had a chance to really understand everything that’s in it. But we will certainly read it,” she said.
Once BLM completes the final RMP, it will be submitted to the governor’s office for further input.
Contact Nicole Raz at nraz@reviewjournal.com or 702-380-4512. Follow @JournalistNikki on Twitter.