Council looks to demolish abandoned jail buildings

The North Las Vegas City Council has moved to demolish four jail buildings left empty since the city jail was shuttered in July and the city’s inmates merged with those at the City of Las Vegas Detention Center.

The move to raze the vacant detention facility came as part of unanimous council approval for a new five-year spending plan on improvement projects, one that sets aside about $800,000 for the demolition of three jail dormitories and a jail administrative building by the end of 2018.

Plans to abandon the jail first grew out of city officials’ efforts to secure millions in annual cost savings over the next five years and did not include a push to level the buildings.

“These buildings are 10-year-old pre-fabricated buildings that are exceeding 20 years in age,” explained City Manager Timothy Hacker. “There’s a lot of structural issues in those facilities as well as the fact they don’t meet standards as far as housing inmates.

“Because of that, it’s felt we need to remove them.”

The effort came as a surprise to Mayor Shari Buck, who held out hope as recently as last month that the buildings might be reappropriated.

“I didn’t realize we were going to demolish it now,” Buck said of the jail. “But it’s not a building that’s usable, and I knew that it was going to cost way too much to go back in and use that building again.”

Buck also joined in council-wide support for Nevada’s recent bid to house a national drone-testing site.

Federal Aviation Administration officials are considering Nevada alongside more than 30 other states interested in hosting six drone ranges already in the works.

Each of those states hopes to get in on the ground floor of a commercial and residential drone production sector expected to grow into a $100 billion industry over the coming decades.

“If we could get one-sixth of that, it would be a wonderful thing for the state of Nevada in terms of money and jobs brought to the state,” said Joe Brown, who sits on a governor-appointed panel in charge of luring a drone site to the state.

“Some have expressed privacy issues, but there will be no (drone) flights over population centers,” Brown reassured the council. “This will all be testing in the open-air expanses of Nevada.”

North Las Vegas City Council members look to reconvene for a regularly scheduled council meeting set for 6 p.m. Wednesday in the council chambers, 2250 Las Vegas Blvd. North.

Contact Centennial and North Las Vegas View reporter James DeHaven at jdehaven@viewnews.com or 702-477-3839.