Question of the Day - 09 May 2024

Yes, a new airport is in the works. It won't replace, but rather augment, Reid International, which is indicated by the new official name. Formerly known as the Ivanpah Valley Airport, it's now called the more prosaic Southern Nevada Supplemental Airport (SNSA).

Whatever it's called, the planning stages for the new airport have been going on for a long time. The initial environmental impact statements were prepared 25 or so years ago at a cost of nearly $15 million. Several environmental studies have since updated that one. 

Prior to the Great Recession, so confident were some officials that the Ivanpah Valley Airport would be built that MGM Resorts International tore down Nevada Landing and planned to use that site and some adjacent real estate to develop tract housing for employees. That project went away when the airport was temporarily shelved in favor of the shiny Terminal 3 at Reid (then McCarran), the arrival and departure point for most overseas travelers.

Anyway, when it’s built, SNSA will sit five miles south of little Jean, Nevada, 30 miles southwest of the city along I-15. It will encompass what are now 6,500 acres of Mojave Desert scrub. The Ivanpah airport was predicated on the projection that Reid would max out at 55 million passengers a year by 2017. Between the Great Recession and COVID, that didn't happen. While the project was budgeted at $4 billion, that figure was set in 2005. Fast-forward nearly 20 years and the price tag is certain have ballooned for an airport that is intended to host 35 million passengers a year.

Chosen for its isolation from the Nellis Air Force Base and Reid airspaces, the SNSA won’t use all 6,500 acres formerly owned by the Bureau of Land Management. Some of it will form a buffer for noise-avoidance purposes and to keep “incompatible development” at bay.

The elephant in the room is Ivanpah Valley’s location. A half-hour from the city makes for a difficult commute. The principal idea for alleviating this has been to install high-speed rail from Primm to Sin City. Momentum and financing were minimal until recently; the Brightline bullet train from southern California will pass right by the site. 

It has been estimated that it will require 20 years to plan, design, and build the SNSA—and indeed much of that work has been done. However, even if the project were given the green light today, it would be years before it became operational. Considering that the project was launched in 1997, that two-decade-plus projection looks more like a 30-year timeline, maybe more.

Since there's no way of implementing a major expansion of Reid International, any discussion of the future inevitably turns to the proposed new airport out near Jean. The good news is that blueprints are finally being drafted and the first phase is projected to open in 2037, exactly 30 years since inception. But we'll take the over on that.