Lincoln County land sells for $47.5 million at BLM auction

MESQUITE - Federal and county officials said they were surprised that more than 20 square miles of rural Lincoln County land fetched $47.5 million at auction as locals worried about the effects of rapid development.

"These sales have exceeded our expectations," Maxine Shane, a Bureau of Land Management spokeswoman in Reno, said Thursday. "It shows there's a great deal of interest in Nevada and the growth of Nevada."

Eight parcels totaling about 13,000 acres sold Wednesday in the first auction under the Lincoln County Conservation, Recreation, and Development Act of 2004. Combined, the properties had been appraised by the BLM at $12.4 million.

"This is way beyond what I expected," Lincoln County Commissioner Spencer Hafen said of the auction at Mesquite City Hall, just over the county line in adjacent Clark County. "I thought we'd get maybe $30 million."

Ten percent of auction proceeds will go to Lincoln County, which covers an area larger than the state of Vermont but has fewer than 4,000 residents. Some 98 percent of the land in the southeast Nevada county is owned by the federal government.

Eighty-five percent of proceeds will go to the BLM, and 5 percent to a state education fund.

Officials have said the auction could spur a development boom leading to 60,000 new residents in the area just north of Mesquite, a community of about 16,000 residents that Mayor Bill Nicholes said are concerned about preservation and controlling growth.

The city 100 miles northeast of Las Vegas was outbid in an attempt to buy a parcel containing a Joshua tree forest and a local landmark, Flat Top Mesa. The parcel had been appraised at $299,000. It sold for $6 million.

Hafen said he expects growth will pay for itself. Property buyers are responsible for developing roads, water, power, sewer and other infrastructure.

One winning bidder, Garry Goett, of Olympia Land Corp., bought more than 5,200 acres for $20.2 million. He said he expected homes be built in the area within three or four years.

The average cost per acre in the Lincoln County auction was $3,562.

A developer paid just under $300,000 an acre for a parcel totaling 1,710 acres last week in a similar sale in Las Vegas under the Southern Nevada Public Land Management Act of 1998.

On the Net:

Bureau of Land Management, Nevada State Office: http://www.nv.blm.gov