Enterprise, BLM annexation seen as swift but sure

Greg Harman

Friday, June 16, 2000 | 11:09 a.m.

As city of Henderson officials put the final touches on an annexation application for a 5,500-acre block of unincorporated Clark County and U.S. Bureau of Land Management property, residents of the area are bracing for what many now view as an inevitability.

"All they can do is protest, (but) it's not obvious it can prevented," said John Hiatt, president of Enterprise Township's advisory board, which protested the pending annexation last year. "We've already said we don't like a lot of this, and they're not too impressed."

But protests -- though common when the proposal was first raised over a year ago -- are unlikely since the city revamped its annexation plan to exclude all residents who do not ask to be included in the expanding city limits.

In fact, city officials are boasting that since the council approved the annexation almost two weeks ago, more than a dozen letters from Enterprise residents who did not respond to the city's original query have been received asking how to join the annexation into Henderson.

The total acreage approved for annexation includes 5,100 acres of BLM land. The remaining 373 acres is privately owned by residents of Enterprise Township.

"A tremendous amount of pressure" was being put on the BLM by developers to gain access to the federal land on Henderson's western boundary, said Stephanie Garcia, a Henderson community planner.

Many master-planned communities are now nearing completion in western Henderson, and developers are looking for areas to grow.

"If we hadn't have done this, the BLM could have conceivably sold off in 20-acre parcels," Garcia said.

And those individual parcels would not have fallen under Henderson's stringent development guidelines, which most visibly have the city flush with green public parks.

In an April letter to Del Webb Communities Inc., Mayor Jim Gibson summarized the city's interest in annexation.

The BLM land was about to go up for public auction, he said, and development not directed by Henderson "might occur in a manner incompatible with existing land uses within the city (which could) impact Henderson's quality of life, property values, delivery of public services and crime rates."

The Enterprise area to be annexed encircles a scattering of homes that did not opt to participate in the annexation. While these properties may not benefit from city services such as a supply of potable water, trash pickup and police protection, they will share the whirl of development and dust that is likely to soon envelope the mostly undeveloped corner of the Las Vegas Valley.

Art Ritter lives in the affected area of Enterprise, a part of the county he says is "populated mainly by people who did not want to live cheek-to-jowl in tract housing."

He foresees an expansion of Green Valley, an affluent area of Henderson filled with planned communities and strip malls, into the rural township lands.

"We don't want to be in Green Valley. If we wanted to move to Henderson, we would have moved to Henderson," Ritter complained.

But fantastic growth is already planned for this southeastern portion of the Las Vegas Valley.

A joint planning area developed by Henderson and Clark County planners commits the majority of the land to low density residential, with pockets of high density residential and commercial. A small parcel abutting the Henderson Executive Airport has been proposed as an industrial park.

The Henderson City Council is expected to approve an annexation report containing a land use plan Tuesday night. If it is approved, a public hearing will be held July 11 followed by a 15-day protest period for property owners within the annexed property.

The city could adopt an annexation ordinance as soon as Aug. 1, finalizing the expansion effort.

Then after BLM officials decide which acreage to put up for sale, the bidding war between developers will begin.