Boyd Gaming, Las Vegas Reach Land Agreement

To acquire land in support of the Main Street Station redevelopment project 16 years ago, the city of Las Vegas spent $6.9 million in public funds, scooping up three small parcels through eminent domain for a proposed 900-space parking garage to accommodate the crowds.

But the crowds never came and the original Main Street Station failed.

In 1993, Boyd Gaming resurrected the bankrupt hotel-casino. But the land value of the adjacent property over the years has been reassessed at far less than what the city paid for it. So much so, Boyd went from paying more than $27,000 in annual property taxes in 1994 to about one-quarter of that amount last year, the Las Vegas City Council was told Wednesday.

City Attorney Brad Jerbic told the council the city apparently paid too much for the land through condemnation, as he presented to the board Boyd's latest offer of $1.68 million to free itself of the obligation to build the parking garage for which there no longer is a need.

The council, acting as the redevelopment agency, voted 7-0 to accept the offer.

It ended a sad chapter in the saga of the city's efforts to redevelop decaying parts of the downtown area -- a longtime process that has had its share of embarrassing failures.

The Main Street Station parking garage fiasco joins that dubious list that includes the "Minami Tower" which never materialized on the site where the new federal building now stands, and the time in the 1980s when the city used eminent domain to boot out a disabled service station owner whose business stood in the way of the Charleston Plaza Shopping Center.

Ancient history? Perhaps. But Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman noted prior to voting Wednesday that such harsh lessons can and should be learned from the use of eminent domain power.

"The city, in its efforts to redevelop, should not engage in condemnation of private (property) for private (interests)," Goodman said. "It's not good policy."

The Main Street Station parking garage issue dragged on for so long because the city several years ago decided to try to build a nearby events center that would have benefited from such a facility. That venture also fell through.

During the years that Boyd Group has owned the land adjacent to the Main Street Station, the city has received $891,400 as its share of tax money on the property, the council was told Wednesday. And the parking garage settlement, Jerbic said, represents $15 a square foot compared with the going rate of 91 cents a square foot for similar downtown property.

Also, as a non-monetary bonus, Boyd Gaming, in a letter from Chairman Bill Boyd that was presented to the council Wednesday, agreed to help the city obtain access to the adjacent 61-acre Union Park development through the land that had been earmarked for the garage.

The latest offer was part of the seventh amendment to the contract that was hammered out with original Main Street Station developer Bob Snow in 1989, who at the time redeveloped the failed Park hotel/casino.

In 1993, The Boyd Group bought the closed Main Street Station and shelled out $45 million to renovate it. The move, in effect, bailed out city officials who were under public scrutiny for having sunk taxpayer dollars into a venture that critics at the time had labeled a potential failure given Snow's lack of gaming experience.

Snow, at the time, said he was not so much concerned with the gaming operation as he was with making the Main Street Station a showplace, complete with antiques he had collected over the years as operator of a non-gaming resort in Florida. He also proposed a huge "festival marketplace" shopping venue in conjunction with the large planned parking garage.

But the festival marketplace, like the garage, was never built. Before that deal collapsed, however, the city was in the process of obtaining adjacent property through eminent domain for those projects and to build the Ogden underpass.

In 1992 the city paid $6.97 million for the land to close a court-challenged condemnation in which the Union Pacific Railroad was forced to sell the property to make way for construction of the festival marketplace, according to Clark County assessor's office records.

Two years later, the city and Boyd Gaming entered into an agreement calling for the company to build the 900-space parking garage in return for obtaining the property next to the then-closed Main Street Station casino that Boyd had purchased. The resort still operates today as a Boyd hotel/casino.

In 2002, the council again changed the agreement so that instead of building a parking garage Boyd Gaming could provide land for a proposed hockey arena. Boyd put $1.5 million into an account for the arena, which was then being called the Las Vegas Events Center. The company then spent $3 ,000 developing plans for the proposed arena.

The payment offered Wednesday represents the remainder of those funds plus another $500,000 from Boyd. The Sun has previously reported that much of that money has been earmarked for a planned downtown performing arts center.