nugget project

The Carson Nugget Development Advisory Committee voted Monday night to forward the still-changing plans for the Carson City Center/Nugget Project to the Board of Supervisors.

The committee heard a presentation from P3 Development about the feasibility plan they said showed that the project was viable.

The Carson Nugget Development Advisory Committee will meet tonight at 6:30 in the Sierra Room at the Carson City Community Center. The committee will be discussing the feasibility report for the Carson City City Center/Nugget Project, and will possibly vote to recommend the report to the Board of Supervisors.

We will have the live video of the meeting here. You can see the agenda here.

One point I think you could get all sides of the debate over the Carson City Center/Nugget Project to agree on is that it's a very complicated deal.

But after spending a good deal of time looking at the newly released feasibility study for this project, it struck me that it's really not that complicated. If you strip away all the extraneous issues about the land leases and who is paying who, it comes down to a simple trade.

It boils down to this: the Carson Nugget is giving the city a piece of land to build a new library and public plaza. In return, the city is building the Nugget a new parking garage for its casino and future hotel/conference center.

I have been been going over the Nugget Project feasibility report this morning, tying to digest the details.

Overall, it really isn't much different than what was presented to the citizens committee back in September. The one exception is that P3 Development seems to think that building a hotel is more feasible now, following another study showing that it is.

Carson City Manager Larry Werner announced at today's Board of Supervisors meeting that a financial feasibility plan has been completed and will be released to the public sometime today.

Update: Werner emailed and said the plan would be available Wednesday morning at 9.

Werner said that the plan covers the financial feasibility of the project, and that they think they have a feasible project to move forward with. He said that as far as the actual development plans, not much has changed since P3 Development gave the Nugget Project citizens advisory committee an update in September.

I was going through old notes this morning, and found some scribbling I'd done about the old vacant Kmart on North Carson Street, sitting next to a printout of the Meridian Report on the feasibility of the state office portion of the Nugget Project.

It was like one of those old commercials for Reese's Peanut Butter Cups, where the chocolate and the peanut butter collide to make something pretty cool.

The Carson City Board of Supervisors will hold a special meeting today at noon to approve the canvas of results from last week's election.

At the board's next regularly scheduled meeting on Nov. 16, it will vote to appoint John McKenna to fill the remaining term of Supervisor Pete Livermore, who resigned last week after winning his election for Nevada Assembly District 40.

The board will also tackle funding for the downtown ice rink and holiday events, and the approval of a grant application for federal funds to support the proposed City Center/Nugget Project.

I turned off the TV late last night, unable to withstand another minute of talking head after talking head trying to come up with a narrative for this election.

For some reason, it seems they think that their audience is comprised of 6-year-olds who can't comprehend anything that isn't force-fed to them in tiny, single-concept bites.

Was it the NObama election? Was the the fiery phoenix of the Tea Party? Was it creeping socialism, or simple arrogance? What about government spending? Or was it just time to throw the bums out?

The Appeal's Brian Duggan has a story that a new study commissioned by the Nugget Project developer shows a hotel and events center could be feasible and lure convention business to Carson City.

This seems to conflict with P3 Development's presentation to the citizens advisory committee last month, where the developer said the hotel would not be feasible for at least five years.

By Guy W. Farmer

After Carson Nugget President Steve Neighbors accused me of basing my opposition to the Nugget Bailout Project (aka the City Center Project) on “conjecture and false innuendo” in last Tuesday’s Appeal, I asked former mayors Ray Masayko and Marv Teixeira for their opinions on this dubious project. Both Masayko and Teixeira, who were political rivals in recent years, raised serious questions about the $80 million project, which would put nearly $40 million tax dollars at risk during an economic recession and
impose an additional one-eighth-cent sales tax.

Under a proposed state budget plan, four of Nevada's museums operated by the Division of Museums and History would close, including the Nevada State Railroad Museum in Carson City, said Peter Barton, acting administrator for the Division of Museums and History.

Other museums on the proposed state budget chopping block are the Nevada Historical Society in Reno, the state's oldest museum which opened in 1905; the Lost City Museum in Overton; and the Nevada Northern Railway Passenger and Freight Depot in East Ely.

Rick Oshinski has resigned at CEO of P3 Development Inc. of Sacramento, the firm picked to develop the Nugget Project. But he will still be close by.

In a letter to his colleagues, Oshinski said he was leaving the company to return to his former home of Carson City to join the law firm of Scarpello & Huss, Ltd.

When P3 Development presented an update on the Nugget Project on Sept. 27, they included a range of estimates for annual lease payments that Carson City would have to pay for the public portion of the project.

Those payments ranged from $946,000 to $2.2 million per year.

But it wasn't clear then was how much of those lease payments was for the land owned by the Hop & Mae Adams Foundation, and how much would go to P3 for the lease-to-own deal for the buildings.

Monday's Advisory Committee Meeting included a lot of new details about the Nugget Project that we are still looking through.

For those who haven't seen the presentation by P3 Development, you can read it here.

I think they made the best pitch for this project so far, and showed that this somewhat scaled-down version is at least close to being feasible, given the revenue constraints requested by members of the Board of Supervisors.

The developer of the Carson City Center/Nugget Project tonight presented an update on the progress made so far on a final plan to present to the city for approval.

The meeting of the Nugget Project Advisory Committee was supposed to see the final plans tonight, but those plans have been delayed by legal and financial issues, according to City Manager Larry Werner.

What they did get was an overview of where the project stands right now, along with a look at some numbers that could determine its feasibility.

You can catch the live video and Twitter updates here. The power-point presentation can be found here.

The yet-to-be-completed plans for the Carson City Center aka Nugget Project may not be voted on by the Carson City Board of Supervisors until after the beginning of the new year, according to City Manager Larry Werner.

Werner said there will be a status update presented to the citizens committee on Sept. 27. Another committee meeting will be scheduled once the plans are finalized, Werner said. The presentation of the full plans had already been delayed twice before, adding two months to the original timeline.

Carson Nugget President Steve Neighbors has penned a guest column for the Appeal talking about his view of the Carson City Center aka Nugget Project. Give it a read.

Carson City Manager Larry Werner told the Board of Supervisors today that they are hoping to wrap up work on cost estimates for the city's portion of the Nugget Project by the end of the day.

Werner said that these cost estimates would determine if they had a feasible project or not, compared with the funding that would be provided by a 1/8 cent sales tax increase and tax increment financing.

He told the board that the results would be presented to the citizen's committee, whose next meeting is tentatively scheduled for Sept. 27.

Carson Nugget president Steve Neighbors was on hand to discuss some of the details of the Carson City Center aka Nugget Project at the Nevada Business Connections breakfast this morning at the Gold Dust West.

(You can read all the background materials on the project here. )

The next Nevada Business Connections’ Monthly Networking Breakfast is scheduled for Wednesday, September 15 at the Gold Dust West casino in Carson City.

One of the topics of discussion will be the Carson Nugget Project, with Steve Neighbors and Mark Lewis. The second topic will be the Tahoe-Reno Industrial Center with Len Gilman.

Doors open at 7:30 a.m. and breakfast starts at 8. Cost is $20 for members, $30 for guests.

Please RSVP by calling (775) 882-8306 or email kris@nevadabusinessconnections.com

Posted in the comments on our last Nugget Project story, there appears to be the text of a marketing plan to help sell this project to the public.

The text was posted by Michael Douglass, the author of a Nevada Appeal guest column in favor of the project. He is also the brother of Tammy Westergard, who has been deeply involved in the project, first with the Office of Business Development, and now with the Carson City Library.

Here it is:

There is a unique situation on the Carson City Board of Supervisors this year, with two of its members facing each other in the race for the District 40 Assembly seat.

Since either Democrat Robin Williamson or Republican Pete Livermore is almost guaranteed to win (there is always the extremely remote possibility of a third-party or write-in candidate winning), one of them will likely be leaving the board early.

There is an interesting discussion going on over at the Nevada Appeal site concerning the Nugget Project.

The story begins two week ago when Guy Farmer wrote a rather harsh column that slammed the Nugget Project. In response, last week there was a guest column by Michael Douglass criticizing Farmer's take on the subject.

It's a bit of a challenge to follow the story out today about what's happening with the Carson City Center/Nugget Project.

It starts out saying that Nugget President Steve Neighbors is "encouraged" by the response from the governor's office, after meeting with them to discuss their concerns about the state's role in the project. Those concerns were expressed in a letter from the governor's Deputy Chief of Staff Lynn Hettrick last month.

But later on in today's story, Hettrick said the same issues about providing sufficient space for the Department of Health and Human Services and parking remain. I detailed how this affects the project here, and ran the numbers to show how the state office component of the plan doesn't pencil out.

The V&T engine derailed last night at about 6:30 near Gold Hill after a series of heavy rains produced micro-mudslides, many of which may have flowed onto the V&T Railroad tracks.

A financial services bill working its way through the U.S. Senate contains a $400,000 earmark that appears to be destined for the business incubator that is part of the planned Carson City Center/Nugget Project.

It appears that the report on the City Center/Nugget Project slated to be presented at the end of this month will be delayed another 30 days.

According to an email from City Manager Larry Werner, the city and P3 Development need more time to look at issues "related to parking garages, ownership, land use issues, utilities and a myriad of other questions."

Last week we reported that the governor's office sent a letter to Nugget Project consultant Mark Lewis taking issue with certain parts of the feasibility study for moving three state agencies into the Carson City Center/Nugget Project.

The one big item missing in that story was the Meridian Business Advisors feasibility study itself, which we now have a copy of.