It was more than rumor … it was very concrete fact, although the airport in question was planned as a supplement to McCarran, not a replacement. It would have been between Jean and Primm, Nevada, and Clark County was authorized to buy 6,500 acres for it (at a cost of $21 million) in 2008. Unfortunately for the planners, a little thing called the Great Recession hit and passenger traffic into McCarran International Airport slowed. The Ivanpah airport, which was to have broken ground in 2010 and opened in 2017, was put on indefinite hold in June 2010 and there it remains.
The primary impetus for a second airport was to relieve McCarran from exceeding its 53 million-passenger capacity, with Ivanpah designed to accommodate 35 million travelers, at a cost of $7 billion. Its runways were to have stretched 12,000 to 15,000 feet--long enough to handle the jumbo jets used on international flights. This also would have made an ideal cargo hub, according to UNLV Professor of Regional Economics Alan Schlottman, who told the Las Vegas Review-Journal, "We are in a great position as a potential distribution hub," given the nexus of a prospective international airport and an immediately adjacent Union Pacific rail line.
While then-Clark County Aviation Department Director Randy Walker contemplated making room for 10 massive freighters and 288,000 square feet of cargo-storage space, the county’s sights were and remained trained on passenger traffic. "Conventions and tourism are the real driver of our economy, so when you're talking about economic development, diversification could be part of economic development, but what we were talking about is we didn't want the airport to be an impediment to the (resort) economy," said Walker in response to Schlottman. He also noted that he had thousands of square feet of unused cargo space at McCarran.
Although McCarran was projected to hit 55 million passengers a year in 2017, the recession put a big dent in those numbers. Traffic hit 47.7 million in 2007 but, by 2010 – when the Ivanpah airport was put on hold – it had fallen to below 40 million. Now McCarran isn’t expected to reach its saturation point until 2026, meaning the Clark County Aviation Department wouldn’t have to start work on an Ivanpah ‘overflow’ airport until 2019.
Safe to say, the airport authority feels no urgency to move on the issue. McCarran spokesman Chris Jones says, "The Ivanpah airport project remains on hold. The Department of Aviation will continue to preserve the site for future airport development, but at present there is no timetable for when that development might commence; the timing will largely depend upon the rate at which passenger counts continue to grow at McCarran.
"The Department’s position has always been to first maximize the available air service capacity at McCarran, which management believes is capable of potentially handling as many as 55 million passengers per year with minimal changes to the current infrastructure. (In 2007, [the airport] handled nearly 48 million passengers, and that was prior to Terminal 3 and the added utility it provides.) For myriad reasons, no one is going to turn dirt on a multi-billion dollar project prior to the point at which it’s necessary, and Ivanpah is not currently near that point."
For the year, McCarran is on pace to host 42 million passengers – a long way from the tipping point where a second airport would be required. As for the current workforce at McCarran, the Department of Aviation employs 1,377 Las Vegans. That’s not counting, Jones adds, "another 14,084 who hold airport badges allowing them to work for other entities, including airlines, concessionaires, police, fire, and the federal agencies that operate on-airport, among others." So that’s 15,461 people working AT McCarran, with just 9% of them working directly FOR the airport.
