Federal lands officials are selling raw construction materials to the highest bidders in Southern Nevada again, another sign the building industry is back from the dead.
The U.S. Bureau of Land Management next month plans to auction nearly 9.6 million tons of sand and gravel from government-owned pits off Lone Mountain Road, west of the 215 Beltway in northwest Las Vegas, the agency said today.
The auction is March 3 at the BLM’s office at 4701 N. Torrey Pines Drive. Prospective buyers must pay at least 94 cents per ton.
If everything sells, the auction will generate at least $9 million in proceeds.
Sand and gravel can be used in the construction of highways, high-rise buildings, power plants, airport runways and bridges, among other things, the BLM said.
Agency officials used to auction the raw materials “all the time,” but demand dried up, so they switched to direct, noncompetitive sales, said Kirsten Cannon, a BLM spokeswoman in Las Vegas.
Demand has now returned, she said, “so that’s why we’re moving back to auctions.”
Last summer, for instance, the agency auctioned off 30,000 tons of gravel stockpiles in Pahrump for $2.57 per ton — or $77,100 — to Wulfenstein Construction Co., Cannon said.
Southern Nevada’s construction industry remains a shadow of what it was during the real estate bubble last decade, but it has grown the past few years after suffering huge job losses during the recession.
The Las Vegas area had 43,600 construction workers as of September, up 22 percent from two years earlier, according to the Associated General Contractors of America.
By comparison, even in spring 2008 as the market was heading south, the valley had 94,500 construction workers.