Planners: Land aplenty in growth boundary

Jeff Schweers

Friday, April 11, 1997 | 11:59 a.m.

Enough vacant land exists within a growth boundary proposed by state Senate Minority Leader Dina Titus, D-Las Vegas, to keep home builders busy for years, county planners said.

Titus plans to ask the Assembly Infrastructure Committee next week for a bill to be drafted based on her proposal, which parrots an existing boundary set by the federal government.

Local officials said they support the idea, but said the current boundaries are too far out to have any practical effect on growth.

"A lot of the growth we're talking about is not leapfrog development," Clark County Commission Chairwoman Yvonne Atkinson Gates said. "It's growth occurring in parcels that are ready for development right now."

The valley's growth also is being fueled by huge sales of federal land and exchanges involving several thousand acres.

"If we didn't have all these federal land swaps, we wouldn't have to deal with all this stuff that comes up," Gates said.

About 27,000 acres of Bureau of Land Management property are up for grabs, and more than three times as much in private land holdings, said Jeff Harris, advanced planning manager for Clark County.

Furthermore, county planners also have already identified the boundaries proposed by Titus as the ultimate buildout zone for the valley. Those borders coincide with a Bureau of Land Management land disposal boundary map endorsed years ago by the County Commission.

"In terms of ultimate buildout, it's a pretty good boundary line," Harris said.

But Harris said he was not sure how it would help control growth because of the timing of development.

"We'd have to crystal ball that," Harris said. "I'm not sure we could put a number of years of growth to the inside line. That's dependent on the type of growth and the density of growth."

The valley is being developed at a rate of about 1,000 acres a year, planners said. The county follows a comprehensive plan that uses community district boundaries to identify where development can occur.

Community district boundaries are reviewed annually and expanded as water and sewer lines and roads reach to the outer edges of the valley's growth.

"If you view this as an outer line and as growth grows out, the community district element provides for orderly growth out, hopefully to avoid leafrog development," Harris said.

"The county program also puts on alert the public service providers -- the school district, Metro Police, the fire department -- that growth is coming around the corner for those areas," Harris said.

In some cases, such as the Summerlin South and Rhodes Ranch developments, the commission will allow development outside the community district boundary in exchange for an agreement by the master planner of the property to pay for water and sewer lines and roads.

While development has been allowed to occur outside the community boundaries, Harris said, "there really hasn't been traditional leapfrog growth occurring here."

Instead, the county, in conjunction with the large land deals where a developer or group takes down several thousand acres at a time, goes through a major projects review, Harris said. Out of that process comes an agreement by the developer to provide sewer, water, roads, park space and school sites in exchange for permission to build, he said.

Nonetheless, county planners have not been able to keep up with an unprecedented 8 percent to 9 percent growth rate over the last decade. Gates and other leaders have been discussing ways to better manage that growth, but nothing yet has come before the city or county boards.

The County Commission last week unanimously approved a $3.7 billion plan to finance water, sewer and school construction, endorsing the Legislature's plans to approve a quarter cent sales tax increase and 1 percent room tax increase.

But local leaders acknowledge they may have to rein in growth to keep up with the demand for services. Some proposals include a regional planning board, a moratorium on hotel-casino construction, and a cap on the annual growth rate.

Gates said she had no objection if the Legislature wants to dictate how the county and cities should grow.

"If they want to legislate it, that's fine, it makes our job easier," Gates said. "But the boundaries need to be realistic, and placed where they are going to have an impact."