$900,000 to design pedestrian bridge to Symphony Park
How much does it cost to design a foot bridge across Main Street?
Somewhere around $900,000, according to Las Vegas leaders.
They plan to spend at least that much drawing up blueprints for a bridge over the railroad tracks between Main Street and Symphony Park, the 61-acre former railroad yard often called the heart of Las Vegas’ downtown redevelopment efforts.
An interlocal agreement unanimously approved by City Council members Wednesday will see the Regional Transportation Commission foot the bill for engineering the bridge, one of three the city hopes will help connect the retail and residential Symphony Park development with the rest of downtown.
The Transportation Commission has stipulated that the project be completed by the end of 2017, the same year Las Vegas leaders hope to have built and opened a $200 million soccer stadium meant to host a Major League Soccer expansion franchise.
Councilman Bob Coffin expects the bridge will go up with or without a stadium to feed pedestrian foot traffic.
City leaders have sunk at least $80 million into Symphony Park infrastructure improvements and environmental remediation over the past several years.
There is no development underway at the northern end of park, where developers and city staff have long promised a 1.6-million-square-foot hotel-casino and hundreds of residential housing units near the future pedestrian bridge construction site.
Coffin hopes that a new bridge connecting developers’ parcels with the rest of downtown will help get those projects off the ground.
“We have to do something there to trigger growth on other parcels,” the Ward 3 councilman said Wednesday. “(The bridge) probably was to start the legal machinery moving, to follow through on your promises.
“We have to do that, sooner rather than later.”
It’s hard to say who will use the bridge — which will include a concrete deck, elevators, stairs and a moving walkway — if Symphony Park isn’t built out over the next few years.
City Public Works staffers did not return requests for comment on any feasibility studies or technical specs drawn up in support of the project.
The bridge isn’t the first of its kind to be built in the area. A roughly $6 million pedestrian bridge connecting City Hall with the Smith Center for the Performing Arts was completed in May 2013.
That bridge took up part of an expensive Symphony Park parcel later bought by a California real estate developer, knocking down the tract’s purchase price when it was sold in 2012. The developer, CITRA Real Estate Capital, hasn’t yet followed through on plans to bring a $71 million skilled nursing center to the lot.
Las Vegas spent $600,000 to design that bridge project. Spokesman Jace Radke said city engineering costs usually run around 10 percent of total bridge construction costs.
Clark County Public Works Director Denis Cederburg said that figure sounded reasonable, especially given the nature of the city’s latest project.
“The railroad is a complicating factor,” Cederburg said. “It can take some time to deal with. … Considering that, 10 percent sounds pretty good.”
City councilman Bob Beers, who has led something of a crusade against efforts to bring a publicly subsidized soccer stadium to the area, said he too expects the city will build its Symphony Park bridges with or without further growth in the area.
Beers likened the projects to Reno’s 2-mile-long ReTRAC train trench — a controversial $188 million undertaking sometimes credited for providing a boost to that city’s redeveloping downtown.
If Las Vegas can’t provide similar links to funnel residents and tourists downtown, Symphony Park’s future would look a lot bleaker, Beers said.
“Someday there’s going to be something there,” he said. “So the answer, ultimately, is to build it for the same reason Reno dug a trench through downtown.
“From Bonneville to Ogden is something like eight blocks, and you need those connections.”
Contact James DeHaven at jdehaven@reviewjournal.com or 702-477-3839. Find him on Twitter: @JamesDeHaven.