A Utah development firm has big plans for the 135 acres of vacant land sitting across from the VA Medical Center in North Las Vegas. Officials from Pacific Group, based out of Salt Lake City, hope to have a multibillion-dollar medical campus completed in the next 10 years.
The project, which could create as many as 10,000 jobs, is expected to feature over 2 million square feet of “laboratory, research, and medical office space,” along with retail, restaurant and hotel buildouts.
“This was something that was a unique opportunity,” said Tony Sansone, chief financial officer for Pacific Group. “We and the city of North Las Vegas have a vision of how we can develop best-in-class medical services for the residents of North Las Vegas, as well as other residents in Southern Nevada. It’s woefully needed.”
Earlier this year, the city agreed to sell the land to a Pacific Group subsidiary, called Legacy AK LLC, according to Nevada Secretary of State records, for more than $36 million.
The land, originally controlled by the Bureau of Land Management, is part of a job creation zone for the city.
A federal law passed in 2014 allowed for the land to be given to the city, though it required proceeds from the sale to go back to the federal government.
Jared Luke, director of government affairs and economic development at the city, said once it’s finished, the project will likely add $3.2 billion of economic input and output.
“There’s 275,000 residents in North Las Vegas, and we don’t have a general services hospital,” said Mayor John Lee. “The VA Hospital is also sending many of its patients to other places throughout the [Las Vegas Valley] because it can’t service all of them. So this will be huge.”
According to a study conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in 2019, Nevada ranked ahead of only three states—Idaho, Mississippi, and Wyoming—in number of physicians per 100,000 residents.
That year, Nevada had only 204 physicians in patient care per 100,000 residents.
In North Las Vegas, North Vista, the main acute-care hospital in the city, has only 177 beds.
The Helios complex, by comparison, could eventually be home to more than 700 hospital beds.
“Doctors want to come to locations like Las Vegas,” Lee said. “We have great weather and entertainment and all of those things, but one thing that really hurts us is our Medicaid reimbursement. But the specialization that we’re expecting to have [at Helios] will require us to have to get patients who aren’t Medicaid patients, for the most part.”
The specialty health care options expected to be available at Helios would be widespread, according to North Las Vegas officials, though those exact areas aren’t known yet.
It’s likely, however, that children’s and women’s medical service offerings will be involved.
Because of the complex’s short distance from the VA Medical Center, Sansone said he thinks the VA facility could send some of its outsourced patients to Helios once facilities begin to open. In fact, he said the complex could help significantly cut into the thousands of procedures that the VA Medical Center needs to outsource each year.
“The nice thing about this project is that the city and the state, everybody knows what the need here is,” Sansone said. “They’re rooting for us and providing any assistance they can so we can move forward as quickly as we can.”
Officials say the project could take seven to 10 years to complete, but Sansone said he’s confident it will get done.
“We’ve been developing these master-planned communities for 30 years,” he said. “We have experience with helping to develop Lake Las Vegas, so we’re familiar with this area. With the VA Hospital right across the street from Helios, more housing set to go up in the area and about 2,000 acres UNLV owns and is looking at developing, it’s going to be a major hub.”
Lee said an important aspect of the project is the jobs it will create.
For a region known for its many gaming and hospitality job opportunities, Lee said a medical and retail complex like Helios would help diversify North Las Vegas’ economy.
“This will help diversify the incomes of the people of North Las Vegas, so they won’t all be in gaming, tourism and hospitality,” Lee said. “We’re going to be giving people options now for getting into work related to manufacturing and health care so they’re not being trained just for hotel work or construction. We are no longer a bedroom community to anybody, and we’re only getting stronger.”
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