Vote ends flap over ‘big-box’ law

Thursday, June 8, 2000 | 9:59 a.m.

Clark County Commissioners followed the expected path Wednesday, ditching a controversial law that restricted Wal-Marts and other "big box," mixed-use retail stores and adopting a much weaker "residential protection" ordinance.

The commission voted 7-0 to repeal the so-called Wal-Mart ordinance. The vote on the neighborhood protection ordinance was 5-2, with commissioners Mary Kincaid and Myrna Williams objecting to the ordinance as anti-business.

The substitute ordinance requires a 500-foot separation between single-family homes and big-box stores over 115,000 square feet, or that the retail building have a 100-foot setback from the property line, or a 75-foot setback from the property line with extensive landscaping or other buffer.

The current requirement, from the Clark County Building Department, is a 60-foot setback.

The ordinance passed Wednesday started life two months ago as a much stronger bill that would have restricted such large retail operations to within a quarter-mile of highway on and off ramps, but later amendments substantially diluted its impact.

Still, Commissioner Erin Kenny, who introduced the first Wal-Mart ordinance, the repeal action and the substitute ordinance, said the move was "a huge step" toward protecting neighborhoods.

Kenny said one of the strongest aspects of the new law is that it expands the notification area, in which a prospective developer must inform nearby residents that the company is seeking county approval for a large retail operation, from 500 to 1,000 feet.

The commissioners also will ensure that buildings coming in under the law have extensive buffers, such as landscaping, between residential developments and large retail operations, Kenny vowed.

The new law also incorporates and supersedes an ordinance passed earlier this year that significantly restricted creation of new "neighborhood casinos." Kenny said the only significant difference between the old neighborhood-casino ordinance and the new language is that it expands the notification zone from 2,500 feet to 5,000 feet.

The law "effectively eliminates the possibility of a neighborhood casino," said Commission Chairman Bruce Woodbury, who introduced the previous neighborhood casino bill with Commissioner Yvonne Atkinson-Gates.

The vote ended almost eight months of political theater. Spurred on by unions opposed to Wal-Mart building two large superstores in the Las Vegas Valley, the commission last October voted to ban such large retail operations.

A state judge in December, however, said the plans to build the stores could go forward, but did not rule directly on the legality of the ban. Wal-Mart backed a successful signature drive for a petition that forced the commission to either repeal the ban or see it up for a popular vote in the November election.

Although some developers said they felt the new ordinance unfairly targets single-store operators while ignoring multiple-store shopping centers, Wal-Mart spokeswoman Amy Hill said her company can live with the new ordinance.