LAS VEGAS (KTNV) — UNLV will not be adding a Vegas Loop station to their campus.
Interim university president Chris Heavey said the university looked at the pros and cons and decided to pass on The Boring Company's offer to build a station out for them for free.
"After extensive consultation with our team, we declined that offer. The reason, ultimately, is because our parking service does not connect directly to DMV and therefore, the types of tickets that we give to people are not enforceable beyond the boundaries of our campus. One of the concerns became managing the parking that might be associated with that station," Heavey explained. "We were worried about the Thomas & Mack Center parking lot becoming the free parking lot for the airport and basically, people leaving their cars in our parking lot and jumping on the station to access the airport and us having very little ability to control that."
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However, on Thursday, university officials did get permission from the Nevada System of Higher Education Board of Regents to sell part of a parking lot near the Thomas & Mack Center to The Boring Company, which is currently tunneling towards Harry Reid International Airport.
"The tunnel that they're talking about would roughly be 50 feet or so underground, under just a small portion of our land," Heavey said. "We don't anticipate any disruption at all to campus activities, to traffic, or anything else because they'll be way underground by the time they touch UNLV property."
Several students voiced their concerns about The Boring Company, especially recent reports about the green pond and safety incidents, including one that left Clark County firefighters with permanent scars from acid burns.
"The company's recent business and community malpractices have caused great concern for myself and members of the graduate professional community here at UNLV," said Devin Lopez, the graduate professional student body president. "I'm not here to litigate these specific cases but it's very important that this committee and the full board consider how this company might try to engage in the same corrupt practices with NSHE and UNLV, should a contract be approved."
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Lopez also asked the board for safeguards to be put in place to "ensure transparency in this process and reduce the ability of corrupt practices to permeate our system."
"I believe that rushing through this process will put students, faculty and staff's health in danger if the company continues operations as it has done in recent years," he said.
A representative of The Boring Company was at the meeting and told the board the project is supervised and he invited members of the UNLV community to see exactly what the company is doing.
"It's extremely important for us, when we're working with UNLV, to make sure that the students are excited about what we're building. I think at our core, The Boring Company, we're an engineering company that wants to make the infrastructure around us inspiring and exciting," said Tyler Fairbanks, Director of Project Development for The Boring Company. "We'd like to work with you to get students in to tour the system that we have here in Las Vegas to show you what this. is to give you a behind-the-scenes look. We've actually had a number of UNLV student tours before. [We] really want to extend that, get as many students in as possible to show you exactly what this is."
Fairbanks also reiterated that the company works with third-party environmental inspectors every week and they also work with OSHA inspectors.
"We're absolutely committed to ensuring that we are environmentally compliant, that we are compliant from a safety standpoint," he said.
Regent Patrick Boylan questioned what the students are getting out of the deal, if the land is given to The Boring Company.
"I still don't see how this is going to benefit the students of UNLV. UNLV is in my district and I spoke to a bunch of students who live there, go to school there. ... Just money coming into the university isn't good enough for me," Boylan said. "We had agreed at one time that they were going to make a station right there at the corner but they were not going to give the students any discounts. You've got to have the art of the deal. What do you offer back to us? I know you pay us a wee bit of money but how does it benefit the students?"
Heavey said there are two benefits to approving the sale.
"One is we're essentially giving an easement for an island that there's no other conceivable use for. It's essentially 50 feet underground on the edge of a parking lot. I can't conceive of any negative benefits to any actual direct cost of the campus. And so, we would essentially be realizing revenue for giving up an easement of some piece of property that we would never be able to use anyway," Heavey said. "The other piece is we do see this as an important community project, which has been supported by the county, which is supported by the LVCVA and which potentially has many benefits to the residents of Southern Nevada."
For Regent Amy Carvalho, it's less an issue of university benefits but a question as to why the proposal to sell the land is so rushed, especially when the proposal given to regents did not include the final land appraisal and what The Boring Company will pay to UNLV.
"I am concerned that we are setting a precedent if we decide to just go forward with this without knowing what the appraisal is," Carvalho said. "I appreciate The Boring Company's effort to try to move this forward but I would like to see the appraisal before we vote on this. That's a large unknown right now."
Heavey said there is a provision in the request to the board that would have a 15-day notification period before any final deals would be executed and the chancellor would have the final sign off.
"I appreciate that but I'd like that decision to be in the hands of the committee and not the chancellor, to be frank," Carvalho said. "I think that this is an important item. I think that if the appraisal is only a few weeks out, we can add this to a special meeting in January as well. I don't think we need to rush through this before we understand what the appraisal is."
Heavey did say that if The Boring Company isn't willing to meet the current land appraisal value, it would be no deal.
"We won't sell it for anything other than the appraised value. If the appraised value comes in higher than The Boring Company would want to pay, then we would simply not do this deal."
Ultimately, the board approved the easement.