MARK WAITE / PVT Don Stout, of Wulfenstein Construction Co., looks over a grader and water truck smoothing out a site for construction trailers at the federal detention center site. MARK WAITE / PVT Bryan Wulfenstein, center, is flanked by co-workers Victor Gomez, at left, and Levi Kiefer, at right, on the detention center construction site. Wulfenstein Construction was hired as a subcontractor to do grading, utility work and paving. Advertisement

Construction work began this week at the federal detention center site at 2250 E. Mesquite Ave.

A tortoise fence was going up around the property Tuesday. By Wednesday, crews for Wulfenstein Construction were grading the site for a construction trailer.

A biologist was watching for desert tortoises.

Corrections Corporation of America announced April 7 it received the go-ahead from the Office of the Federal Detention Trustee to build the $80 million detention center, which will house 1,072 inmates supervised by the U.S. Marshals Service.

Pahrump Senior Building Inspector Brent Steed said the company received a grading permit and a permit to install two construction trailers and hook up power.

CCA has been approved for a building permit but hasn't picked it up yet, Steed said. It will pay almost $300,000 in permit fees, impact fees and other costs at the time they pick up the building permit.

The tortoise fence, which is a few feet high, runs along the south side of East Mesquite Avenue. Nye County Public Works engineering technician Don Skalicky said that's to enclose the road improvements CCA will be required to make under the development agreement.

"They're still in the review stages. So nothing has been approved as far as the road improvements," Skalicky said. "We'll have to wait until we get those approved before anything is set in stone."

Streets aren't ordinarily closed during contruction, he said. Contractors have to maintain safe access at all times.

Buddy Johns, CCA senior director of project development, said the environmental mitigation work, which includes a survey and completing the tortoise fence, should be completed by Friday or Monday, after which they will start grading the entire site. He said about 50 or 60 acres of the 120-acre site will be cleared.

Only one desert tortoise has been spotted so far, and it was off the premises, Johns said.

Wulfenstein Construction Co. has been hired by DCK Worldwide to do the on-site grading, utility work and paving the building pads. Johns said bids will be let in two or three months for off-site improvements.

Some of the local subcontractors haven't been notified they have jobs on the detention center construction, Johns said.

"We anticipate there will be probably a little over $10 million in total that will go to local contractors," Johns said.

A construction manager from Phoenix will be visiting the site on a weekly basis, Johns said. An official groundbreaking date in early June is expected to be finalized in the next few days, he said.

The development agreement calls for CCA to improve two lanes of Mesquite Avenue from Highway 160 to the eastern boundary of the property and one lane of Panorama Road from Mesquite Avenue north to Greta Boulevard.

Johns said Mesquite Avenue will be widened and paved. But he said road improvements are usually constructed late in the construction schedule so as not to tear up the road with all the trucks.

Opponents of the detention center vowed to continue fighting the project.

Attorney Nancy Lord, representing the Concerned Citizens for a Safe Community, said federal Judge Kent Dawson has yet to rule on her request for a permanent injunction and her motion to bring the Office of the Federal Detention Trustee into the case. She also requested the production of documents and is trying to get depositions from county commissioners.

Lord's motion opposing a Nye County request for a summary judgment claims meetings on the detention center weren't sufficiently noticed and neighboring landowners weren't properly notified. She criticized the posting of the public hearings in the Federal Register which refer to a "Las Vegas area detention facility."

Lord claims relegating some audience members, including many opponents, to a back room at the Bob Ruud Community Center at the Dec. 16 county commission meeting, where they watched the public hearing on the development agreement on video, violated their First Amendment rights.

"We're still going after our permanent injunction," said Donna Cox, president of Concerned Citizens for a Safe Community. "We're keeping an eye on things and hopefully it won't go any further than the fence," Cox said.

"The strategy is to keep right on going until they throw us out of court and I suspect if we get thrown out of court and this continues, there's going to be other lawsuits filed and actually suing for damages on behalf of people who live up there now," she said.

Concerned Citizens plans to recall county Commissioner Butch Borasky, who Cox said was a driving force behind the project.

Concerned Citizens has outgrown its meeting location at the Pahrump Community Library and is looking for a new meeting space, she said. There's also talk of a television show.