Nugget project developer to create plan in 90 days
Submitted by admin on Mon, 05/10/2010 - 11:21pm
Executives from P3 Development were introduced to the members of the Carson Nugget Redevelopment Advisory Committee tonight, saying they were looking forward to working as partners with Carson City and the Nugget.
For a play-by-play of the meeting, check out the live blog here.
The news out of this meeting was that the developer will be working under contract with the city's redevelopment agency (pending approval), the Nugget and the Carson City Library to come up with a preliminary plan to determine the feasibility of the project.
From this plan, P3 would come up with a guaranteed maximum price for the project. CEO Rick Oshinski said this is how the company works with public partners, by giving them a set price, which makes the company responsible for hitting that price.
Supervisor Aldean said the money the city was making available — approximately $12 million from an 1/8 cent sales tax increase and $13 million from tax increment financing — was not negotiable. Oshinski confirmed that this is their understanding, and they were looking to make the project work with the available funding.
Under this contract, P3 will be paid $160,000, with $75,000 coming from the Nugget, $75,000 from the redevelopment agency and the rest from the library.
P3 president and project manager Mike Courtney said the scale of the project will be determined by their feasibility study, and that there are some parts that might or might not make sense.
Committee member Guy Rocha asked if they had ever had a project where they did this kind of planning and said no to, and Courtney answered yes, that it's possible that they may come back and say the project isn't feasible.
One of the queries made to the P3 executives concerned who they were working for, and what the relationship was with the city. The developer was chosen by Nugget President Steve Neighbors, but Courtney said they would all be partners in the project. But he later referred to the city and the Nugget as clients, and that P3 would work with them as long as the clients wanted them to.
The P3 executives also confirmed that getting state agencies to commit to moving into the planned office space was a major part of the project in order to secure the financing they need to get it done.
They said they talked with Lynn Hettrick, deputy chief of staff to Gov. Gibbons, and that the governor was in favor of the project. They revealed that they are talking with three state agencies about moving: the Gaming Control Board, the Public Utilities Commission and the Department of Health and Human Services.
According to Courtney, the Nugget is paying for a study being conducted by Meridian Business Advisers to show that the state can save money by consolidating agencies closer to the legislative campus, even if they have to pay higher rents for newly constructed office space.
But several people at the meeting had doubts that the state would make available extra funding for moving state agencies when they are facing their own extreme financial challenges. The P3 executives were asked if the project could proceed without the state agencies, and they responded it's possible, but it would have to be scaled back considerably.
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