ST. GEORGE — A large hotel-restaurant-retail-golf resort under construction in Ivins is growing larger, both in its footprint and the financing behind it.
Black Desert Resort is receiving $153 million in financing from a federal-state program aimed to boost renewable energy and efficiency. The developer of the resort also told St. George News that the resort is closing a purchase of Red Mountain Resort across the street on Snow Canyon Parkway and plans to build a tunnel under the road to connect the two resorts.
The extra millions come from the joint federal and state Commercial Property Assessed Clean Energy program, known as C-PACE. The $153 million award announced this week is the largest in the nation’s history, nearly doubling the previous record of $89 million awarded to the 111 Wall Street building in New York City for carbon-reduction renovations.
In the case of Black Desert Resort, those renewable resources include using its own water wells and a water recycling system that will keep the resort from drawing off the city water supply, and the largest-of-it-kind system to draw power off the Internet to reuse the amount of electricity the resort needs from existing power lines.
“We had an engineering partner hire a third party to go through our resort and they said we’re spending $200 million more than required by the building code,” said Patrick Manning, owner of Black Desert developer Enlaw LLC. “They said, ‘Here’s the building standard and we exceeded that.’”
While C-PACE is a federal program administered by state governments like Utah’s, funding comes from investors like “Shark Tank”-style venture capitalists and other capital investors. The idea is the government puts a lien on the property and the investors put in a 30-year, no-interest loan with the expectation that the energy cost savings will ultimately pay for the loan.
The C -PACE infusion is on top of the $106 million coming from a bond from the City of Ivins through what is called a Public Infrastructure District, or PID, where hikes in the property taxes of Black Desert residents over the next 20 years will go toward paying off the bond.
The PID and a previous move to create more direct public funding drew criticism from Ivins residents and the City Council, but Brennen Brown – managing director for the special district group at financial firm D.A. Davidson that has handled both the PID and C-PACE financing for the resort – said the C-PACE award is validation for the city giving its financial backing.
“This remarkable project features some of the most innovative financing tools available in the market today, and we’re proud to be a leader in providing these financial solutions for our clients,” Brown said in an e-mailed statement.
To the developer, the C-PACE award also validates the extra dollars that have been spent on energy efficiency at the resort.
“Here’s the real key … lenders like banks don’t recognize a value on an energy-saving component,” Manning said. “This program allows developers to go above and beyond with real hard-core energy and power conservation.”
Manning added local residents may not realize the scope of the project in Ivins, even with the site’s giant cranes currently being the tallest manmade objects in Southern Utah.
“I don’t know if they’re grasping it yet,” Manning said of the resort.
The 580-acre Black Desert portion alone will include a 150-room hotel, a family village with hundreds of residential units, an 19-hole golf course that will be home to Utah Tech’s golf team and a pedestrian-only retail and the Desert Boardwalk restaurant and retail village that will be similar to places like Town Square in Las Vegas and The Grove in Los Angeles.
The golf course will be the first part of the resort completed; the finishing touches are being made now and Manning said the course will open at the start of next month for preview rounds by people who want to purchase them.
Manning also said the resort center is up to its third and final story and while there is still no official opening date, the pace is “going quickly.”
Also in November, Manning said Enlaw will take ownership of Red Mountain Resort and plans to integrate it with the new resort.
Though that integration will not be overground, with the concept being that Red Mountain guests could take a golf cart from there to the Black Desert golf course without needing to touch busy Snow Canyon Parkway.
“After Red Mountain Resort closes in November, we want to build a tunnel so people can go from Red Mountain to Black Desert Resort,” Manning said.
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