New tent skin’s glare rattles official

The new skin just installed on a massive and controversial tent at West-World of Scottsdale has the vice mayor pitching a fit.

Crews recently replaced the previous skin on the 120,000-square-foot tent — formerly white and featuring a large American flag on either side — with one that is supposed to blend in with its Sonoran Desert surroundings.

But Vice Mayor Tony Nelssen said city staff missed the mark after he realized the blinding glare he met driving south on Pima Road was the new tent skin.

“It’s like looking in a mirror,” Nelssen said of the sunlight reflecting off the tent skin at about 1 p.m. “It was brutal.”

The tent has, for the last few years, housed major events like the Barrett-Jackson Collector Car Auction. It’s been a source of friction for a variety of reasons since the city installed it at WestWorld, the 120-acre events center east of Loop 101 and just north of Frank Lloyd Wright Boulevard.

The old tent skin — conspicuous from Loop 101 — drew criticism from some who said it was gaudy and too big for the area when it was built two years ago. Scottsdale paid $2 million for the tent in 2005 and another $2 million to erect it.

The city paid FCI Constructors Inc. $1.4 million to replace the old, tattered skin this month with a sandstone-colored one meant to match the surrounding desert.

“I don’t think we’ve got that,” Nelssen said. “You get high sun. It hits that stuff and comes right back at eye level.”

Mike Phillips, city spokesman, said the new tent skin is made of the same fabric used on other WestWorld buildings. The city has no immediate plans to make any changes to it, Phillips said.

“It will dull with age, dust and weather,” he said.

But Nelssen said he’s skeptical. City staff didn’t take the tent’s shape into account when considering its potential reflectivity, he said.

“That may or may not be true,” he said. “When staff said they were going to put something more appropriate up, they left out a little detail, and that’s the reflectivity.”

North Scottsdale activist Howard Myers said the tent’s glare could be a problem.

“One of the reasons for the muted color is to lower reflectivity,” he said. “The reflectivity is a pretty big issue.”

Nelssen said there’s probably not much the city can do about it now without incurring significant additional costs.

“I think we’re going to get some phone calls,” he said.

The tent also has been a sticking point in negotiations between Barrett-Jackson and the city to sign a 20-year deal to keep the lucrative collector car auction at WestWorld.

Barrett-Jackson officials have said the tent is inadequate to house its car auction, and has pegged their agreement to a long-term contract, in part, on the city’s commitment to build a new $80 million multiuse events center at WestWorld.

But talks between the two sides have been fitful since the City Council in May dropped funding for the building from its fiscal year 2007-08 budget. In addition, the city’s refusal to sell Barrett-Jackson up to seven acres of land at West-World adjacent to eight acres it currently owns has prompted the auction to threaten to scale down the Scottsdale event in favor of a new venue in Las Vegas.

Barrett-Jackson officials said the company is willing to spend $30 million to $60 million to build an auction house at WestWorld if the city would sell it the land. It now costs Barrett-Jackson about $3 million each year to set up and take down the auction, its representatives have said.