Apartments still a complex issue

Denise Cardinal

Wednesday, July 1, 1998 | 11:32 a.m.

As the city of Las Vegas continues its clean-up of what was once Sierra Nevada Arms low-income apartments, officials continue to sift through the rubble of events leading up to the demolition.

The situation started more than a year ago when Shepherd Hills Development Corp. bought the dilapidated complex for $1 from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. The complex is at Simmons Street and Holly Avenue, south of Lake Mead Boulevard.

According to Nevada's secretary of state's office, Shepherd Hills was formed in April 1995 as a for-profit development corporation. Two reverends, Emmannual Wasson III and A.J. Thompson, started the company.

In January 1996 the same company was dissolved and reformed as a non-profit corporation. Since then it has become delinquent in its incorporation payments, making it defunct in the eyes of the state.

Elliot Eisner, attorney for Shepherd Hills, said the delinquent status was an oversight by the company and it would be brought back in good standing very quickly.

There are, however, some unanswered questions surrounding the corporation. No address is listed for Shepherd Hills in the phone book and only a voice recording answers the phone calls.

In previous reports, the reverends were said to have been tied to the Zion Chapel Out Reach Center -- another organization without a listed address and only a voice recording at the other end of the line.

The reverends, when called at their homes, would not comment or return phone calls.

Because there is so much bad press surrounding the old apartment complex, the ministers were told not to speak to the media, Eisner said.

Part of Shepherd Hills' agreement with HUD gave the developer $448,000 in a federal grant to remove asbestos from the buildings. The money also was supposed to be used to have all of the 52 structures demolished.

Through a general contractor, Q&H Nevada, Shepherd Hills hired Southwest Colored Rock to get rid of the asbestos and raze the buildings. Instead Southwest sold the salvage rights of those buildings to local contractor Mike Kinzler.

Kinzler, in turn, planned to move the buildings off the Shepherd Hills' property and renovate them. The structures remained, however, and the Las Vegas City Council started demolition proceedings against the buildings on the grounds that they were a safety hazard and public nuisance.

Then Kinzler received some extensions on his deadlines, insisting he was just waiting on permits to move the buildings or waiting on financing help from a partner. Finally, more than 120 days after the first order was issued on the buildings, the City Council voted to have them demolished.

That was a few weeks ago. Two weeks ago, three of the 46 remaining buildings caught on fire and burned to the ground. The blaze was just what the City Council wanted to avoid.

"That never should have happened," said Neighborhood Services Manager Orlando Sanchez. "Those buildings should have been gone."

Most of the blame has been laid with Kinzler, since he owns the buildings. But some want to know just what Shepherd Hills was doing during all of the proceedings and why the development corporation has remained so silent.

"They're responsible, too," said Leni Skaar, neighbor to the buildings and Las Vegas planning commissioner.

Others claim they're as much to blame as Kinzler. Representatives from Southwest Colored Rock contend that Shepherd Hills still owes them money. And HUD officials said they won't give the remaining $180,000 grant to the developers because it already had problems with the second payment it made.

Loretta Orme, the chief operating officer for Q&H, said that according to its contract with Southwest, there was nothing her company could do.

Now HUD is working on giving the remaining grant funds to the city to cover the cost of the demolition of the buildings -- what the money was originally set aside for and supposed to have paid for.

Orme said Shepherd Hills project is in site plan review now, and that financing has been arranged though not finalized for the 196 low-income townhouses slated for the land.

She estimates ground will be broken by the end of the year, and it'll take about 18 months for the construction of the project to be completed. The townhomes will be for residents with 60 percent of the median income of the city, as determined by the housing authority -- about $32,000 is currently the median.

The homes will be rented through a mutual housing association, where renters hold more than half of the positions on a governing board for the residents, giving them a say in how their neighborhood is taken care of.

"They're going to look good, and be great for that area," she said. "It'll have a pool, basketball hoop and a family resource center for computers and other programs for residents."