City OKs rent deal for promised jobs for Louisiana company

A Louisiana-based company is getting a steep discount in rent to move into a city-owned office building, part of a deal meant to entice the company to Las Vegas and create as many as 200 jobs.

The Las Vegas City Council voted
6-1 to approve the lease Wednesday, but council members Bob Coffin and Lois Tarkanian expressed reservations despite the promise of job creation.

Because there is plenty of privately owned commercial space sitting vacant and landlords are willing to make sweet deals to land a tenant, they asked, should the city be competing with the private sector?

"I am worried about this," Coffin said to Gerry Solis, an executive with Barrister Global Services Network, an information technology firm based in Hammond, La.

"You didn't shop for cheap rent here. This town is loaded with it," he said. "Why should we allow you to take advantage of this space in a city-owned building?"

Tarkanian shared his concerns but said the prospect of new jobs in an area where the unemployment rate was
12.4 percent in May swayed her to vote in favor.

The agreement calls for Barrister Global to lease 3,980 square feet on the fourth floor of the city's Development Services Center at 333 Rancho Drive. The monthly rent for the two-year term would be 41 cents per square foot, a total of $39,163.

That is far below the appraised value of $1.99 per square foot, which would equal $190,085 over two years.

The company has the option of leasing an additional 4,278 square feet of space on the same floor at the same terms. The space is empty now and is considered surplus, city officials said.

A two-year lease extension also is available, but at that point, the rent would increase to $1.61 per square foot.

Barrister Global initially plans to hire 19 people for a call center operation providing customer service and technical support for computer clients this year, Solis said. If all goes as planned and the company relocates its headquarters, the number of new jobs would swell to about 200, he said.

Las Vegas is attractive for several reasons, Solis said, including the fact that his company has a growing client base in the West. Hammond is close to New Orleans and is prone to a hurricane disaster, he said, and does not have a big enough pool of qualified potential employees.

Councilman Steve Ross said he focused on the job potential, not the lease terms.

Bill Arent, the city's business development director, noted that the leased city space "doesn't even come close to meeting their needs" if the company relocates its headquarters.

"As they succeed, they're going to effectively force themselves out," Arent said.

If the company decides to put its headquarters somewhere in Nevada besides Las Vegas, he added, the amount of rent the city ceded -- $151,397 -- would have to be repaid. That provision does not apply if the company chooses a location outside Nevada.

Contact reporter Alan Choate at achoate@reviewjournal.com or 702-229-6435.