Nye County first to present community center proposal

Discussions regarding the development of a Pahrump community center continued during Valley Electric Association’s (VEA) Wednesday, Jan. 29, board of directors meeting.

Nye County Manager Tim Sutton provided board members with a presentation and opportunity to discuss details on the issue.

In fact, the county was the first party to offer up a proposal to Valley Electric Association to build the community center.

Nye County’s proposal follows a letter of intent sent out by Valley Electric Association, seeking, “…either a committee, a non-profit organization, key community members, or Nye County will spearhead the effort to create the Pahrump Community Center,” Valley Electric’s letter of intent stated, in part.

The backstory on the plan stems from a Nye County Board of Commissioners meeting from September of last year when commissioners discussed accepting the donation of land and money from Valley Electric Association to construct a community center. The cash, totaling $5 million will come from VEA’s charitable foundation following the sale of a 230-kV transmission system.

Valley Electric Association’s open letter of intent, closes in August of 2020.

“VEA at that time offered various incentives, one of which was a $5 million donation, plus land for the development of a community center,” Sutton noted. “After that was approved by the board, VEA launched an aggressive and effective public outreach campaign. Shortly thereafter, VEA formed a committee of community stakeholders to discuss a plan forward for the development of this proposed community center.”

During the meeting, aside from some questions about the project, board members did not indicate whether they would greenlight the project, as the lion’s share of discussions took place during executive session, prior to adjournment.

Looking for ideas

Sutton also noted that on Aug. 2 of last year, that Valley Electric Association issued a letter of intent and invited people to come forward to present proposals.

“That’s why we are here today,” he said. “I obtained authorization for my board, the Nye County Board of County Commissioners on Sept. 17th of 2019. Today we want to present some conceptual drawings of what we envision the community center being. Some of this was taken from the committee discussions, and we feel that this accurately reflects what the community wants and what the donation can support.”

A rendering of the community center showed the facility to be 28,000 square feet, with ample room for a full-sized basketball court.

“That being said, a basketball court-sized room is sufficient for lots of other different activities,” Sutton said. “We contemplated that it would also be used for volleyball, indoor soccer, for hockey, convention space and pretty much anything else you can think of. We also have two large meeting rooms and we contemplated using those for yoga, a weight room, martial arts instruction, along with health and wellness classes. We also have three racquetball courts, which was something that was brought up in the committee discussions and it’s something that people have been clamoring for. We also have a small kitchen. We think it’s a very versatile design and a reasonable one. We also think it’s something that can be accomplished with the donation that this board has put out there.”

Desired location

Though VEA’s cash donation came with land for the community center, Sutton told the board that Nye County has plenty of land, with the desired location being on the far south end of town.

“We have a 428-acre parcel to the south at the fairgrounds that we would love to have this facility,” he said. “As far as costs are concerned, we tried to keep it with what the $5 million donation would be.”

Additional presentation

Also present during the board meeting were officials from Xtreme Manufacturing out of Las Vegas.

The business is a sister company to Ahern Rentals.

George Harris and Brandon Main spoke about the development of the “Xtreme Cube,” which Main said is a modular structure and more than suitable for a community center in Pahrump.

Main, the CEO, noted Xtreme Cubes has several hundred thousands of square feet of buildings throughout North America, and Northern Canada.

“We actually got our start in industrial applications, that being offices, break rooms and bathrooms for remote workforce accommodations and it quickly spawned into retail environments,” he told the board. “People might know of Container Park in Las Vegas or Palm Plaza, and we built both of those. Over the years, we have been engaged by several different customers and firms as well as general contractors to build different structures that are built in the factory.”

Additionally, Main spoke about the advantages of creating modular structures.

He noted that there are some people who have a negative connotation where they think of trailers, RVs or commercial coaches.

“This is far different from that,” he said. “This is game-changing technology, with factory built code compliance steel buildings. With that being said, think about taking the construction environment and putting it into an assembly-line environment in a factory. You also have better cost and schedule control.”

Additional development

When Valley Electric Association CEO Mark Stallon inquired about whether it’s possible to expand the community center in the future, Main’s response was an adamant yes.

“You can go side to side or front to back, and even multi-story,” he said. “Really, the sky’s the limit with modulars these days and it’s the wave of the future. A lot of the general contractors are having struggles with finding the proper labor and seasonality to build, due to weather delays. We take all of the unknowns out of the equation at the factory and we have a much better control on the end product and the deliverables. We are able to deliver on budget on schedule with a much higher quality product. We have been building these modular structures for over a decade.”

Sutton, meanwhile noted that while he was impressed with Xtreme Manufacturing’s presentation, the county must first go out for an Request For Proposal (RFP), before committing to a particular vendor for the community center project.

“We can’t commit to using a particular vendor, but the vendor we have been working with, one of their business models and benefits of their company is that they can work on an expandable basis, and they do that all the time,” he advised the board. “As far as Xtreme Cubes is concerned, with a project that big, it’s not something we can guarantee to anybody, so we will have to put it out to bid and they would be one of the people that we would invite to participate in the bidding process. They have been very helpful and have been interested in the project so we will see if they bid, and I anticipate that they will put in a bid.”

Running the facility

Additionally, Sutton said the county has been working with NyE Communities Coalition to consider taking over maintenance of the facility once it’s constructed.

“We are looking at having three part-time attendants, one full-time attendant, a maintenance person and a facility director,” he said. “I just want to reiterate that there will be no ongoing obligation of any kind from Valley Electric Association.”

Wait and see

At present, Sutton said he’s waiting to hear back from VEA board members regarding the presentation.

“They were going to meet in closed session, and I don’t know if they plan on having additional meetings,” Sutton said. “I haven’t heard anything back since I gave the presentation and I’m going to follow up with an email to see where everything stands, and to see what other information they may need, or if they give us the green light. I was not asking for a firm commitment on the $5 million at that point, but I just wanted to see conceptually if they were okay with what we were proposing so we can spend some time developing architectural plans and a cost build-out for the cost of materials and things like that, because that takes a lot of work. Once I get the green light on that, then we will proceed. I will probably have another presentation before the board with some drawings and on-site plans and other materials that they requested.”

Contact Selwyn Harris at sharris@pvtimes.com, on Twitter @pvtimes