Number-crunching begins on Carson downtown proposal

The look of downtown Carson City could change dramatically in the next few years but some hard numbers-crunching will determine the immediate future of the project.

Plans call for development of a town center that includes a library, plaza, transit hub, parking structure, and office and retail development at eight acres of land owned by the Carson Nugget.

P3 Development of Sacramento, the developer of the $80 million to $100 million project, recently was awarded a 90-day contract to determine the project's feasibility and cost structure.

"We don't yet know how it all will fit together," says Mike Courtney, president of P3 and project manager for the Carson City redevelopment project. "We are going through the process to figure out what can be built so that people can decide three months from now what to go forward with.

"Now we have to figure out the details. While we have been selected to be the master developer, our initial contract of 90 days is to answer all those questions."

The proposed library would be about 60,000 square feet and include a digital media center and business incubator. P3 also would develop about 175,000 square feet of office and another 50,000 square feet of retail space, and a three- to four-story parking garage. An additional component of the redevelopment plan includes a smaller live theater or concert venue.

The office space would help consolidate state workers, who are spread out across town in leased offices, says Mark Lewis, project consultant with the Hop and Mae Adams Foundation, owner of the Carson Nugget and the land proposed for redevelopment.

"This project has the potential of really changing downtown Carson City for the positive forever," says Lewis, the former head of the Reno Redevelopment Agency. "It will create a town center that will bring potentially well over 1,000 office workers into the downtown, as well as new retail and potentially some other entertainment venues, so that there is a sense of place in the downtown area."

Lewis says the next step is to take the project from a conceptual level to a financial one to determine if it can be built and what the total bill would be. He says the library portion of the project would be two-thirds funded through a 0.125 percent increase in Carson City's sales tax, and the rest would be financed through taxes generated by the office and retail components similar to how Aces Ballpark in Reno was financed, Lewis says.

P3 Development would foot the bill for the private components of the project, Courtney says. Rents paid by office and retail tenants would help fund P3's share of the development.

"Up to now all we have is a really good concept; we don't have a plan that decisions can be made from," Courtney says. "One of the issues in Carson City is the public and the city don't want to pay for more than what they can afford to pay for. Our job is to determine how to get it all done."

The project would require removal of some small single-story vacant buildings on land owned by the Nugget. P3 would like to break ground by the end of 2010 or the beginning 2011 in an 18- to 24-month construction window that could employ as many as 850 workers.

And boosting employment in Carson City is what the project is all about, says Joe McCarthy, director of the Office of Business Development.

"What we would like to see is job creation, he says. "If we are fortunate to aggregate additional office workers downtown, what that would do for our local business community would be immeasurable."

P3 has selected the McCarthy Building Companies of St. Louis as general contractor, with Shaheen-Beauchamp Builders acting as local area facilitator.

"They will be the local contractor in Carson City and will help in obtaining all local labor and doing some portion of the project," Courtney says.

AC Martin Partners Inc. of Los Angeles is the architect, with Hannafin Design Associates of Carson City working as local facilitator. Resource Concepts of Carson City will help with all civil engineering work.

"We needed a local presence to work through project approvals and help us administer the project," Courtney says. "We don't go into a community like Carson City without maximizing local presence."

Lewis says redevelopment of the area creates a new vision for a downtown center that could be a model for communities throughout Nevada.

"Now that the freeway is complete, it has pulled off a lot of traffic and trucks from downtown Carson and allowed us to create more of a walking, pedestrian environment," he says. "By building a town center and creating more economic activity and more jobs we can revitalize the area."

And that is important, Lewis says, because the old economic models of Nevada communities primarily gaming and entertainment no longer pack the same punch as in past decades.

"I really believe that is the future," he says. "Some of our business and economic structures probably aren't going to come back as strong as they did in the past. The ability to create new businesses and jobs to replace lost jobs is critical to the economic survival of our communities.

"It's really all about jobs and creating some employment that has diminished. If this project is successful, I believe it will serve as a model for medium- to small-sized communities in Nevada."