Columnist Ken McCall: Lewis Avenue a battle royal between city and county

Ken McCall

Friday, May 30, 1997 | 11:44 a.m.

IF YOU WANT TO TALK about a new era in city-county cooperation, don't start with Lewis Avenue.

Lewis is a quiet little street in downtown Las Vegas, but the "inter-governmental dialogue" over it has been far from tranquil.

What it's been, mostly, is a firefight.

At a recent meeting, county commissioners went ballistic over the street, raining verbal grenades on the Las Vegas City Council, and Mayor Jan Laverty Jones in particular. In a series of indignant speeches, they accused the city of "extortion," "hostage-taking" and "thwarting the will of the voters," among other crimes.

There was even talk about taking the city to court and condemning the property.

But Jones has fired back, accusing the commissioners of "pandering to the TV cameras," and playing fast and loose with the facts.

County officials are impatient and angry because they want to expand the jail onto and across Lewis between Third and Fourth streets. The city, however, doesn't want to close another street.

While using Lewis and the adjacent parking lot might be the cheapest and most efficient design for the jail expansion, the city says, it's not necessarily good for downtown. In fact, city officials say, three separate urban planning consultants have told them they've already closed too many streets and not to close any more unless they can prove it won't hurt.

If the county wants to build across Lewis, the city folks say, it can connect to the expansion with a tunnel or a bridge.

This only served to infuriate the commissioners, who accused the city of reneging on a promise and holding out on Lewis unless the county capitulates on a deal to equalize property taxes. A connection via tunnel or bridge would be too expensive, they said. In delaying the project, the commissioners charged, the city was costing taxpayers $22,000 a day.

"It's hostage-taking!" exclaimed Commissioner Myrna Williams. "The mayor said she would not consider Lewis Street unless we give them total tax equity -- which is totally inequitable to everybody else.

"But we're not going for that, because we have a duty and an obligation to everyone who lives in Clark County."

Jones and other city officials, however, categorically deny the city ever promised to vacate the street or that tax equity has anything to do with their reticence to let it go.

Any linkage to Lewis Avenue in the unsuccessful tax negotiations, Jones said, was strictly the county's idea.

"They threw it on the table," the mayor said, "but then they walked away."

County Manager Dale Askew insists the city promised to vacate Lewis in the original agreement for the sale of the Fifth Street School. The condition was taken out, he said, subject to approval of the justice bond to expand the jail and other facilities.

"They said take it off and when you're ready we'll take it to the City Council and you'll get the vacation," Askew said.

In fact, city staff did take the request to the council after the bond passed in September, and the council granted the request -- subject to eight conditions.

City Manager Larry Barton says the council is still waiting for the two most important conditions to be met.

Heeding their consultants' advice, the council wants the county to do studies that prove abandoning the street won't hurt traffic flow and economic development in the area.

"When you start impeding traffic and even foot traffic, you start eroding the economic value of the surrounding land," Barton said.

When Lewis Avenue was closed at Fourth Street for the Foley Federal Building, Barton said, business owners in the area said they were economically affected.

"We have to have something to assure us that 20 years from now we won't turn back and say, 'Gee, I wish we never had closed that,'" said Assistant City Manager Steve Houchens.

Askew dismissed such talk as "just their party line."

It's logical to close Lewis there, he said, because it's already closed just one block down for the Foley building, then again for the new federal courthouse, then again a couple of blocks east for the Las Vegas Academy.

Nobody's traveling east-west on Lewis, Barton and others have said. You don't need a high-priced consultant to figure that out. But the county hired one anyway, LOCHSA Engineering, which found that the project would generate only 27 additional vehicle trips per day.

Houchens said city traffic people found the report to be "inadequate."

"They had a number of questions," he said, "which haven't been answered."

Commissioner Mary Kincaid criticized the city for abandoning all kinds of streets to create the Fremont Street Experience "for private business, but when they look at the good of the community, they don't want to do it."

Nevertheless, the city is sticking to its guns.

"If those guys weren't just pandering for the TV cameras," Jones said, "why wouldn't they do a legitimate study and present it to the city?

"They're not going to convince me by calling me names in the County Commission chambers. I'm not impressed."

And, one might guess, hundreds of thousands of valley residents -- who want their elected leaders to cooperate and provide good government -- aren't very impressed, either.