■ A secondary Las Vegas airport won’t be operational until at least 2035.

Growth of region spurs study reboot

A long-discussed second commercial airport in Southern Nevada could open to flights by 2040, airport officials said.

With McCarran International Airport on track this year to surpass 50 million passengers going through its gates, the 60 million-passenger threshold that would spur an additional airport could be met in the not-too-distant future.

If the passenger rate continues to grow as it has over the past several years, and if studies regarding the land for the new airport come in favorably, the initial portion of the planned airport south of Las Vegas could be complete in about 15 years, according to Rosemary Vassiliadis, director of the Clark County Department of Aviation.

“If you put it on paper … and everything goes perfect, we could be opening the first phase of the airport, which is probably a more prudent way to go — I mean all these decisions are yet to be made — would be in the 2035 to 2038 time period,” Vassiliadis said. “That is very realistic. It’s very complicated to build an airport.”

The proposed airport in Ivanpah Valley would be built on 6,000 acres of undeveloped federal land along Interstate 15 between Jean and Primm, about 32 miles south of Las Vegas. The proposal was first considered in the early 2000s but was put on hold after the recession caused a drop in tourism.

The next step took place last week when the aviation department, the Federal Aviation Administration and the Bureau of Land Management entered into an agreement to allow for the environmental impact study.

Vassiliadis said the department could go back to the County Commission in a few months to select consultants to carry out the study.

“That’s what really starts the process,” she said.

The study would take at least two