Churchill County Commissioners are working with the City of Fallon to build a new facility at the Fairgrounds that will serve as a civic center, providing relief in times of emergency—funded partially by COVID relief funds through the CARES Act. The facility is estimated to cost upwards of $10 million.
Work on the civic center began in June of 2020 under an emergency declaration that will provide 75,000 square feet of indoor space. The county has primarily awarded the work to local contractors, including; McFadden Electric, D&D Plumbing, Clint Jensen Construction, Fallon Glass & Sign, A&K Earthmovers, One-horse Overheard Door, and Lumos and Associates.
County Manager Jim Barbee spoke recently at the Churchill County Republican Central Committee meeting, likening the building to the event center in Winnemucca. Showing a rendering of the building, he said the front entry would be 100 feet by 30 feet, similar to the entrance at Stockman’s Casino. The county plans to market the facility when possible for community events but will also use it specifically for emergency fallback for sheltering, for future vaccine PODs (Point of Delivery), “when we were doing the flood when we were doing the sandbags,” he said.
The building will be located off Sheckler Road to the east of the swimming pool on the backside of the parking lot next to the existing rodeo arena.
Barbee said the inside of the building would hold an event arena where anything from rodeos to car shows can be held, as well as serve as emergency shelter. The building will have a rodeo arena as well as hard floors that can be installed over the top of that, providing three basketball courts side-by-side. The upper portion will be 35,000 square feet of concrete where vendors can be located.
Barbee said the county will work with the city to market use of the facility. Costs to maintain the facility will be off-set by the economic activity generated by events.
“The idea of this, obviously is a first priority emergency shelter facility, but at the end of the day we will have a facility we can market to bring events to the community and bring economic impact by having those events,” he said. “We’re hoping this will increase our capacity to get new hotels in the community, bring new tax revenue in.” One of the large rodeo events that Winnemucca holds in their facility every year brings in about $3.5 million over a four-day period in terms of economic activity, rippling through all the businesses.
Barbee says it is the intent to market the facility regionally, and the building will position the community to compete with some of the more significant events in southern Oregon and Reno. Although the new building will take up much of the parking space at the fairgrounds, he said there is a 15-acre parcel south of the new facility that was improved during the COVID vaccine POD project that will allow for overflow parking.
Barbee also discussed several other high-priority projects the county is working on, including the new District Courthouse that will be located where the existing CC Communications building is, just west of the old courthouse. Preliminary plans would provide a two-story building with an entry on the south side of the building and provide for two new courts.
In addition, the county is working on putting in a three-lane connector road from Coleman Road to Moody Lane with a bridge across the river. This would allow for the construction of water and wastewater infrastructure in the easement, which would open up the area to the planned housing development at Sky Ranch. “We’re obviously behind the eight-ball on housing,” said Barbee, “We’ve got an expansion that will be happening with the Navy in terms of the F-35 deployment – they are talking between 1,000 and 1,500 new jobs over the next five years coming into the community.”
Barbee said the county and city have seen some movement with developers in the past six weeks and are looking to see some projects getting started.
The county also continues working on the Range Expansion the Navy is proposing and a lands bill that would provide off-sets to the plan, compensating for approximately 65,000-acre loss off of the tax rolls.
Tom Riggins, a former board member of the Nevada State Fair, congratulated the work being done by the county on the Civic Center. “This is long overdue, and I applaud the county for doing it,” he said. “This is a great alternative to small communities who have been priced out of the Reno Event Center."
Comment
Comments