Stadium Developer's Problems Continue as Henderson Sues Him & Four Others
It all started with such excitement. Inspirada "wastelands" were going to be developed, not with homes, but with a major sports complex that was to have placed the City of Henderson on the world map.
Having met Chris Milam and Lee Haney at a meeting in City Hall two years ago, it was one of the most inspiring presentations I'd ever heard.
The desert near the M Resort that was originally designed to be near Inspirada, was going to a major complex that included National Basketball Association, Major League Soccer, Major League Baseball, and potential National Football League franchises. Pro tennis courts were also planned as well as an Aqua Center in future years, in addition to a shopping center that would turn our sleepy town into a major metropolitan area.
Chris Milam
I can still remember watching Chris Milam display his plans while the room filled with a number of Sun City Anthem residents, two of which were on our Board and one, a past Board president, who watched carefully, being mesmerized as the magic he envisioned would some day be a reality.
While I watched the presentation, it brought back a memory I had from 2005 when I visited Sydney, Australia's 2000 Olympic Village; so much so, that I asked him, "Do you have plans to entice the Olympics to Henderson, Nevada?"
...and when Mr. Milam said, "I can't comment on that at this time", my eyes lit up daydreaming of the future. Two weeks later, it was learned Chris Milam contacted the Olympic Committee to inquire about this possibility, but the US Olympic Committee quickly slapped his "wrists" saying it was not his position to even make such a request.
Was this really going to happen?
The City Council approved the complex and it was to be financed with revenue bonds without any cost to residents of Henderson.
It was too good to be true, but somehow it was so thrilling, you wanted to believe it could be true.
...but like most things that "seem too good to be true"...
... it was...
... and the problems mounted in the two succeeding years as Mr. Milam, the Bureau of Land Management, and the City of Henderson, faced the reality that...
It wasn't going to happen after all.
...and the City of Henderson named Chris Milam, Lee Haney, and two attorneys, John Marchiano, and Christopher Stephens, in addition to a Mr. Michael Ford, who previously did consulting work for the City of Henderson, also a former Bureau of Land Management official, in a civil action.
The lawsuit charges that the five individuals "misled Henderson officials....in order to use the city to win a bid on 480 acres of federal land he conspired to sell piecemeal to residential and commercial developers at a substantial profit".
The full details are in the Tuesday, January 29, 2013 edition of the Las Vegas Review Journal's front page of the "Nevada" section, and for those of you who do not receive the paper, here is the article:
From a personal standpoint, this was one of those instances that so many of us hoped would emerge having a spectacular sports complex in our own backyard.
It didn't....but this world needs dreamers who can look at things so many of us are incapable to seeing...
... and in the passion of needing to believe in a dream, people sometimes are incapable of seeing the truth; they believe what they wish to believe, because it gives them hope of a bright future.
...and that's what causes the greatest disappointment.
So, Mr. Milam, you shall have your day in court, and down deep inside, I still want to believe that your original intent was good, despite the mounting evidence.
Each man is innocent until proven otherwise, but in the months and years ahead, as you look at your accusers, know the public was injured emotionally more than the loss of any sum of money.
...and if I were to see Mr. Milam again, I would probably look at him in the same way that a small boy did years ago, when after the 1919 Chicago White Sox "Black Sox" scandal, he approached a man named Shoeless Joe Jackson, and with sadness and a tear in his eyes said to him:
"Say it ain't so, Joe"
That's how much this whole thing hurt.
Dick Arendt
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