City Hall fight may finally pay off

Denise Cardinal

Thursday, Aug. 21, 1997 | 9:05 a.m.

After 10 years of dealing with Las Vegas City Hall bureaucracy, Cindy Olafson and Sophie Romans are hopeful they'll never have to set foot in the building again.

After Wednesday's neighborhood meeting at the Northwest Neighborhood Services Center, there's a good chance they won't have to.

The two own homes in an 18-acre triangular parcel at the corner of Ann Road and Drexal Road in northwest Las Vegas. The piece has been the subject of zoning battle after zoning battle. But Wednesday night's meeting was hosted by developer Don Benedict, who plans to develop the triangle into a shopping center, and the end of the war is in sight.

Benedict is using a brand-new zoning classification called P-D, or planned development, to get city approval for the project. Under P-D, the entire parcel, block or center must get approval for all aspects of the development before ground is broken. Everything from landscaping, traffic studies and architectural style must be submitted for the entire 18-acre site at once, with all owners of the site signing off, before ground can be broken.

The catch is that no modification can be made to the original plan without an amendment approved by the zoning board and City Council, which makes it harder for developers who can have much more freedom under commercial zoning.

The advantage is that P-D classification gives homeowners a greater piece of mind.

"This way, it looks like we'll have some control over what goes in there," said Olafson. "I'm tired of fighting with them."

The fighting has been over how to zone her property. The land 10 years ago was zoned residential. But when the city's master plan was made, the land ended up zoned commercial. The residents fought the city, and won, to get the land re-zoned back to residential.

The land across the street from Drexal, however, is zoned C-2 and will soon be home to car dealerships. So, rather than fight the development and try to keep their homes, Olafson, Romans and the other homeowners on the parcel have agreed to sell their land to Benedict upon a change in zoning.

"Our concern was to make sure these homeowners can get out of there," said Lori Kennedy, a resident who lives across Ann Road from the parcel. She's fairly happy with Benedict's plan -- especially considering the alternatives.

"The owner of the corner lot who's putting a McDonald's and Chevron station there was just going to build it and let the homeowners, who live right next to it, deal with it."

Under the P-D zoning, the corner lot will have to comply with Benedict's master plan. He hopes to have the zoning application finished in two weeks, and to give the neighbors a week to look at it before submitting it to the city. From there, he said, it'll take about another three weeks before the Planning and Zoning Commission makes a decision.