COLUMN: McCarran grows up

As Las Vegas grows, so grows McCarran International Airport.

"It's kind of the chicken and the egg," Hilarie Grey, spokesperson for the airport, said. "We never create the growth, but we want to make sure we don't stand in the way of it."

Grey said the airport is so tied with tourism, that every hotel room added translates into 350 new passengers per year.

"You do the math," she said about hotels going up with thousands of rooms. "Our challenge is different from other airports, because in Las Vegas we turn hotels around so quickly."

In 2000, McCarran handled more than 36 million passengers, up 8.9 percent from 1999. Those numbers put McCarran among the Top 10 busiest airports in North America.

Therefore, the Clark County Department of Aviation is working on Vision 2020, a far-sighted plan that will incorporate the construction of terminals three and four, as well as a new airport in Ivanpah Valley, near the California state line.

Included in the first part of the plan is the acquisition of homes and relocating Russell Road between Spencer and Swenson streets.

Grey said the acquisition program is governed by federal relocation guidelines and the airport is tasked with providing comparable housing for residents. The task is complicated by the fact that these older homes are on larger lots than currently available and many of the homeowners have lower mortgage rates, etc.

"Relocation consultants will act as a personal Realtor to help them identify houses comparable to their current homes and give them choices," Grey said. "Certain homes in the area where Russell Road will be moved had to be purchased. Other houses will be purchased in an attempt to keep the integrity of the neighborhood and for goodwill and to create a buffer zone. If we have a willing seller, we may keep them as homes in the future and just rent them."

The Aviation Department purchased a group of homes at Russell and Burnham Avenue that were rented until about a year ago. "Now it's a ghost town that we're preparing for demolition," she said.

Vision 2020 expands McCarran to capacity and sets up the timetable for the Ivanpah airport.

"McCarran is landlocked and there's not a whole lot we can do. We could never add another runway," Gray said. "McCarran will top out at 55 million (passengers) annually; last year we had 36 million, which is why we're planning now."

Terminal four actually will be open before terminal three, according to Grey. Because four will cater to charter flights, it will be a stand-alone facility at the west end of the airport.

"Terminal four will go up more quickly because 99.9 percent of the passengers have Las Vegas as their destination. They load on buses and head to their hotels, so we don't have to be concerned about connections to other carriers."

She said when terminal three was conceived, it was planned with 14 to 16 gates. "We've had to cut down that number (to eight) because so many of the carriers have gone to wide-body planes."

Ivanpah could open as early as 2007 or 2008, but could be online as late as 2011. Gray said terminal four should be ready in 2005 and terminal three in early 2007.

The department also is planning an expansion on D gates.

"D gate originally was intended to build out to an X. We'll be adding the third leg soon and the last terminal project will be the fourth leg of D gate."

Grey said terminal three will be architecturally as pleasing as D gate, good news for those of us who pick up and drop off visitors at D gate and admire what's been done there.

"The bottom line: another billion dollars worth of projects before we're done at McCarran," she said.

Carmel Hopkins, real estate product manager for the Las Vegas Review-Journal and Las Vegas Sun, can be reached at 380-4574. Her e-mail address is Carmel_Hopkins@ lasvegasnewspapers.com. Snail mail is P.O. Box 70, Las Vegas, NV 89125.

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