Enterprise: A fight for rural lifestyle

Valerie Miller

Thursday, Sept. 30, 1999 | 11:43 a.m.

Residents of Enterprise have lost one battle to preserve their rural community, but the war may be far from over.

They met Wednesday night for the first time since District Court Judge Mark Gibbons backed a rezoning that would allow a police union headquarters in their rural enclave, and the neighbors talked about fighting the ruling.

The Metropolitan Police Protective Association plans to construct a four-building office complex and union facility on 10 acres on Warm Springs Road near Valley View Boulevard. The County Commission in March rezoned the parcel from rural neighborhood preserve to commercial over residents' objections.

More than 400 residents of Enterprise had filed a lawsuit to fight the rezoning after the County Commission voted 5-1 to approve the rezoning. Both the Clark County Planning Commission and the Enterprise Town Board had rejected the request.

At Wednesday's Enterprise Town Board Advisory Meeting at the Enterprise Library, neighbors gathered to discuss the impact of the court's decision. Residents said they are considering an appeal of the ruling.

Members of the rural community contend that allowing such commercial development in the middle of their quiet community will destroy it by creating traffic congestion and safety hazards.

"Having traffic concentrated in that area where we have school buses picking up and dropping off children is going to be dangerous," said Karen Musson, one of the 430 petitioners who fought the decision. "And this police facility will definitely increase traffic because they will have to use surface streets because their is no freeway access off either the 215 freeway or I-15."

In handing down his decision, Gibbons concluded that the County Commission had "substantial evidence" to vote in favor of the zone change and thus ignore the master plan for the area.

Like many of her neighbors, Musson is still struggling to make sense of the judge's ruling. She is also troubled by some of the arguments she said were made by the police association for building on the site.

The association's attorneys, she said, argued that the site was in a high-traffic area, near the corner of Valley View and Warm Springs, with 40,000 to 50,000 cars a day expected to use the intersection in the future.

"But NDOT (the Nevada Department of Transportation) says the 40,000 is not projected until the year 2025, which is 25 years from now," Musson said.

Neighbors in the community fear both the short-term and long-term effect of the court's ruling.

"I don't think the PPA is going to be a good neighbor," Enterprise resident Peter Sarles said. "I've driven by their office on Burnham Street on several occasions, and there's beer bottles and beers cans in the parking lot. It looks like a tavern parking lot, and we don't need that in a residential neighborhood."

Many residents in Enterprise, which only allows two houses per acre, fear that the rezoning of the 10 acres for the association will open the door for more commercial development.

"The decision came out Thursday, and on Friday a commercial developer's 'For Sale' sign went up on the residential property behind my brick wall," Sarles said. "This neighborhood is going to go down the drain in two seconds flat."