Petition for new Clark County arena filed

CARSON CITY -- A Harrah's-led group that wants to build a $500 million sports arena near the Strip with the help of a sales tax increase turned in more than 200,000 signatures from Nevada registered voters who support the idea.

If county clerks and election department officials determine in the next couple of weeks that more than 97,002 of the signatures are valid, then the plan by the Arena Initiative Committee will be presented to the 2011 Legislature.

If legislators authorize the 0.9 percent sales tax increase proposed in the petition, then work could begin. But if they reject the proposal, the measure would be placed before all Nevada voters in the 2012 election.

The sales tax would be collected only within a 3-mile radius of the proposed arena site near the Imperial Palace.

Complicating matters, however, is a move by opponents to persuade people who signed the petition to have their names removed.

Former Clark County Commissioner Bruce Woodbury, who led the arena tax petition effort, said he doubts the opponents have collected enough signatures to "make a dent" in his group's effort.

He said he hopes lawmakers will implement the tax increase, adding that his committee is ready to promote the effort in 2012 if necessary.

"We think the number of signatures we gathered is pretty impressive and we hope they take action," Woodbury said.

The proposal could be controversial because the Legislature probably will be faced with several other proposals to increase taxes to cover a revenue shortfall that some estimate at $3 billion.

By levying the tax increase only in the Strip area, Harrah's hopes to have tourists, not locals, pay virtually all costs of the arena construction.

Harrah's hopes to attract a National Basketball Association team, and possibly a National Hockey League team, to the 18,000-seat plus sports arena.

The gaming company has offered to donate a 10-acre site, valued at $182 million, behind the Imperial Palace for the arena.

The petition itself does not specify where the arena would be located. That decision would be made by the Clark County Commission.

Language in the petition, however, would prevent the commission from choosing a site where the land has not been donated for the project.

The move for the sports arena has been fought by Harrah's competitor MGM Resorts International.

MGM filed a lawsuit in Carson City to derail the petition drive, but District Judge James Todd Russell on Sept. 21 refused to grant the company the relief it sought.

Scott Scherer, a lawyer for Taxpayers for the Protection of Nevada Jobs, which opposes the arena project, said Monday that his group will wait and see whether Harrah's received a sufficient number of signatures to put the matter before the Legislature. It probably will take two or three weeks for signatures to be verified.

"Two-hundred-thousand signatures seems a lot to collect in 45 days," Scherer said.

He said his organization collected many signatures from people who decided to remove their names from the pro-arena petition, but he could not provide a number.

There are other pending moves to build sports arenas in the Las Vegas area.

The city of Las Vegas is in negotiations with the Cordish Cos., a Baltimore developer of sports and casino projects, to build an arena downtown, either on city-owned land at Stewart Avenue and Las Vegas Boulevard or at Symphony Park.

In addition, last week the City Council freed up three adjacent parcels in Symphony Park that had been slated for residential development so the city would have the "flexibility" to pursue a different kind of development there, although Mayor Oscar Goodman and other officials were careful not to characterize the new project as necessarily sports-related.

"I don't want to answer any questions because I am under a confidentiality agreement," Goodman said. "Very sensitive. We've been working on it for weeks."

He also predicted it would be only a matter of weeks until he could announce what the closely guarded secret project is, although similar predictions in the past have not come true.

Reporter Alan Choate contributed to this report. Contact Capital Bureau Chief Ed Vogel at evogel@reviewjournal.com or 775-687-3901.