Sierra Pacific Resources, the parent company of Nevada Power Company, added its name to the elite Founders circle of the Smith Center for the Performing Arts with a $1 million donation to the future Union Park resident’s capital campaign. Sierra Pacific joins a number of other $1 million-plus Founders, including Beverly and Jim Rogers, Cirque du Soleil, the Fertitta Family, MGM Mirage, and the Donald W. Reynolds Foundation, which pledged a windfall of $100 million last fall.

The Smith Center is scheduled to break ground late this year, providing the $470 million dollars it needs is raised. With the campaign already tallying more than $400 million, it looks like things should be right on track for the performing arts center, just one piece of downtown Las Vegas’ Union Park master plan that also includes the Frank Gehry-designed Lou Ruvo Brain Institute.

“We applaud Sierra Pacific Resources’ commitment to making Nevada a better place to live,” said Smith Center President Myron Martin, “and appreciate their leadership in helping us make the Smith Center a LEED certified performing arts complex.”

In addition to becoming the home for the Nevada Ballet Theatre and Las Vegas Philharmonic upon its projected 2011 opening, the three buildings that will compose the Smith Center are designed to meet LEED Silver standards, adding to the new vision of green building downtown that started with the Molasky Corporate Center’s LEED construction.

Alan Choate wrote an interesting, in-a-nutshell article about the progress of development in Las Vegas’ ever-struggling Arts District in yesterday’s Review-Journal, spurned by the relocation of Mark Rowland’s Homage graphic studio to the S2 building at Main Street and Charleston Boulevard.

Tender this with derision over the proposed “gateway” arches planned for the very same intersection, well-reported in this Las Vegas Sun article from Oct. 23. Oh, hell, while you’re at it, scope out plans for the Smith Center in yet another Sun article from that month, since it was mentioned in Choate’s report as well.