Panel formed to pave way for Summerlin cluster homes

Denise Cardinal

Friday, June 12, 1998 | 11:25 a.m.

Summerlin, the city's largest master-planned community, might soon be changing its development standards to allow for cluster housing, a design considered to be on the cutting edge of urban planning.

The Las Vegas Planning Commission formed a subcommittee at its meeting on Thursday made up of city planning staff, three commissioners and Summerlin representatives to try and iron out some changes before the next commission meeting in two weeks. The commissioners on the committee are Leni Skaar, Marilyin Moran and Steve Quinn.

The forming of the committee is in response to a request Summerlin officials made at the last Planning Commission meeting to change its standards to allow for a project planned by Nigro and Associates.

Nigro's project had cluster homes, which refers to a way of positioning high-density residential lots, usually four, so that they share one entrance. The lots are very small, with usually no more than 10 feet between the homes. But to compensate for the small yards, the homes share large areas of common greenspace.

Nigro's project, however, doesn't fall into the general definition of cluster housing because only about 30 percent of the homes in the development are clustered. The rest are just at higher densities -- about 10 units per acre.

In order to allow such high-density housing in Summerlin, the master-planned community's development plan needed to be amended. But the city's planning and development staff had some problems with the amendments.

Included in the changes:

"Everyone likes the idea of cluster housing," Powell said. "They understand staff has concerns but they'd like to see if Summerlin could work with us to provide the standards necessary."