Hitting the Bull’s-eye

Clark County Pulls the Trigger on Shooting Park

Gun-loving Nevadans will finally have their own recreation facility in southern Nevada, thanks to the new $64 million Clark County shooting park at the base of Sheep Mountain.

By Tony Illia

Clark County, where it’s estimated that 47% of the households own firearms, is building a new $64 million recreational shooting park 30 minutes northwest of Las Vegas. The complex is on 2,900 acres of raw desert land between Decatur and Buffalo, just north of Moccasin Road at the base of Sheep Mountain.

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The sprawling multi-phased project requires $38 million worth of site improvements, including 700,000 sq ft of underground utilities. Las Vegas-based Capriati Construction Corp. Inc. is the contractor.

When completed, the park will be the only public shooting range in southern Nevada. Phase one covers 1,000 acres, of which only 30% is being disturbed. Much of the surrounding acreage will serve as a buffer zone.

“We are building the range for 20 years into the future, and we’re building it to handle a population of four million people,” says Clark County Shooting Park manager Don Turner. “This is going to be a premier facility and we’ll be able to handle any type of shooting event in the United States, but our primary purpose is to serve the citizens of Clark County.”

Capriati Construction's project administrator Shane Surber stands in front of one of the flood channels that will run on either side of the park’s roadway.( Photo by Tony Illia)

Capriati began sitework in May with 24 push-pull scrapers, four motor graders and seven water pulls. The job entails 250,000 tons of onsite material crushing, much of which will be used for 4 mi worth of paving and other infrastructure work.

The project entails creating a two-lane, 30-ft-wide access roadway with shoulders as well as six surface parking areas totaling 1,000 spaces. The undertaking will require 21,000 tons worth of asphalt and 40,000 tons of Type II aggregate base. Capriati is additionally extending Decatur Boulevard north as a separate, offsite improvement.

American Asphalt & Grading Co., Las Vegas, is the paving subcontractor.

About 3.5 miles worth of trapezoidal flood channels from 10 to 30 ft wide will line both sides of the roadway. Channel construction uses 70,000 cu yds of roller-compacted concrete up to 2 ft thick. It’s placed with conventional or high-density asphalt-paving equipment then compacted with rollers. It uses the same basic ingredient as conventional concrete, but it’s a drier mix that’s stiff enough to be compacted by vibratory rollers.

“It’s a lot like concrete, but it’s placed like Type II,” says Shane Surber, Capriati’s project administrator. “It will still have a 2,500-lb-per-sq-in. rating.”

Other work calls for installing 12-ft-deep underground box culverts and reinforced concrete pipe for storm drainage. Capriati is additionally creating concrete mat foundation pads for a variety of structures, including 24 skeet houses, a 2,000-sq-ft hunter education center, rifle and pistol silhouette ranges, bench-rest range, cowboy mounted shooting arena and 1,200-yd high-power rifle range.

There will also be 125 trap ranges as well as sporting clays for shotgun enthusiasts. Buildings are mostly simple, single-level masonry block structures with prefabricated metal roofs surrounded by 10- to 20-ft earthen berms that muffle noise and prevent stray gunfire. There is 40,000 sq ft of masonry work, as well as nine underground septic tanks with leech fields.

The project schedule has five milestone completion dates that carry $2,500 a day in penalties. Capriati has met all of the milestones thus far.

The job will see 100 people onsite during the peak of construction activity. Capriati is expected to finish by June 1.

Future plans call for two additional phases that have yet to be defined.

The shooting park’s master plan could develop in “five, 10 or 20 years down the road,” says Clark County spokeswoman Jennifer Knight. “The development of the public module is not that huge of an endeavor” compared to the total area of the site, she says. How and when the remainder of the park will develop will be dictated by available funding and the success and development of the first phase.

Key Players

Owner: Clark County
General Contractor: Capriati Construction Corp. Inc.
Design/Engineers: Poggemeyer Design Group; Orth-Rodgers & Associates; Architect Ali M. Taghdir, AIA
Subcontractor: American Asphalt & Grading Co.

Useful Sources

For more info and a history of the park’s development, visit www.tinyurl.com/9vgrxl

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