Monday, April 20, 1998 | 10:04 a.m.
The 300 residents of Blue Diamond have grown weary of the constant battle to protect their little town nestled in the foothills at the south end of the Red Rock National Conservation Area from encroaching urbanization.
Last year, they succeeded in fighting off a proposed RV Park on 93 acres at the Blue Diamond Highway turn-off three miles southeast of their town and the Red Rock Canyon area.
This year, the Red Rock rebels have mobilized to protest a landowner's request for the highest commercial zoning category on 13.5 acres on the south side of the same junction of state roads 159 and 160.
"What sort of happened in this town is everybody is exhausted and tired," said Elspeth Whitney, chairman of the history department at UNLV and one of the organizer's of last year's battle against the RV Park.
"We have protested things like this over and over again," Whitney said. "We're always having to prove why the project is wrong."
The issue couldn't have come at a worse time for the town, which is still mourning the death last week of a 13-year-old Blue Diamond girl who took her mother's truck and flipped it off the road two miles north of town.
"This particular thing is not on the front of everybody's minds," Whitney said Sunday. "The town is still in shock."
Even before the accident, Whitney said, people were starting to get burned out from Red Rock Redux -- organizing residents, putting together call lists, researching applications and writing letters or making phone calls to commissioners.
"It's very tiring, a never-ending battle," said Katherine Peck, a Las Vegas native and attorney who settled in Blue Diamond after returning to Clark County two years ago. "As soon as one issue goes away or is settled another crops up."
The threat of an outside force energizes a community and brings it tighter, said Charles Whitney, an English professor at UNLV and Elspeth Whitney's husband.
"We'll keep fighting," Charles Whitney said. "I feel privileged to live here and I have a duty to work to maintain our lifestyle. If we don't do it who will?"
The latest issue that has residents mobilizing is a request by Ronald Erskine to reclassify his property for C-2 general commercial use so he can build a 20,000-square-foot shopping center.
The property is currently zoned for rural countryside and general highway frontage.
Erskine already has a use permit for a convenience store and gas station on 1.2 acres. The zoning category he has requested would allow for casino and hotel development as well as retail and alcohol sales.
"They are not required to go ahead with the project once they get the zoning," said Peck, a member of the Red Rock Citizens Advisory Council. "That's the scary thing about this."
If the County Commission does change the zoning, Peck said, then give them the lowest density possible to accommodate the project -- C-1 commercial zoning on the 1.2 acres already zoned for a convenience store and gas station.
County planners have said the request does not conform to the land use guide and recommended approval subject to reducing the zoning to a more limited commercial category on two acres.
Another concern is that Erskine will sell the land as soon as he gets the zoning change. Peck said Erskine had told her as much, and that he had lined up a buyer who made an offer contingent on getting commercial zoning.
"His real intent is to sell the land for top dollar," Peck said.
Approving the zone change amounts to engaging in land speculation, Charles Whitney said.
"This is like giving him a windfall and encouraging development that's not yet planned," he said.
Peck said the Planning Commission's decision was made without benefit of the Red Rock Advisory Council's input.
"The idea is so that the elected and appointed officials know where the citizens stand on an issue," Peck said.
The county planning department said it is the applicant's responsibility to get the item on the advisory council's agenda.
Usually, the applicant has to show how a requested zoning change will benefit the surrounding community. But Blue Diamond residents don't want modern conveniences that close -- the nearest place for gas and beer is 10 miles east at the intersection of State Road 160 and Rainbow Boulevard.
"Anyone who made the conscious decision to live in Red Rock or Blue Diamond did so because they don't want those things near them," Peck said.
A shopping center would only add to the traffic and its related air and noise pollution that residents already have to contend with and attract other commercial development, residents say.
Worse, they say, is that the zoning change could open the door to casino and motel development at the edge of Red Rock Canyon.
Officials saw how Las Vegans felt about Red Rock when Senate Minority Leader Dina Titus used the RV Park issue as an example of the type of leapfrog development that would be stopped under her ring-around-the-valley proposal.
The County Commission, under pressure to show it didn't want state regulations, killed the RV park.
Now that the bill and the RV park are dead, Blue Diamond residents wonder if the commission will uphold its commitment to Red Rock.
"If the County Commission allows this to sneak in a lot of people are going to be angry and it will hurt the commission's credibility," Elspeth Whitney said. "They went on the record saying they want to protect Red Rock."
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