Landscaping planned for Boulder Strip

Adrienne Packer

Wednesday, May 3, 2000 | 10:58 a.m.

The Las Vegas Strip greets visitors with its world-famous neon lights. Downtown embraces tourists with the dazzling Fremont Street Experience.

Hotel-casinos lining the Boulder Highway hit the jackpot if tourists pull into their parking lots before taking a look at the drab street-scape and making a U-turn.

The steady deterioration of the southeast gateway into Las Vegas has become an embarrassment to nearby homeowners who fear crime will spill into their neighborhoods and their property values will plummet.

"When I bring relatives down the Boulder Strip, they immediately think I live in a ghetto area," said Marion Aimsworth, a 6-year resident of the Desert Inn Mobile Estates just off the highway.

But that won't be the case for long, or so a collection of active residents hope.

On Tuesday Clark County commissioners granted the citizen-led Boulder Strip Association's request to create a special improvement district that will fund a landscaping project along a 1.2-mile stretch of the highway median.

The first phase of landscaping will blanket the bare desert median between Desert Inn Road and U.S. 95 and between Nellis Boulevard and the Nevada Palace hotel-casino.

"The big casinos have been given all the gravy," Aimsworth said of the megaresorts that tower over the Las Vegas Strip. "All the people on the outskirts are left hanging until someone says there must be something done."

Sen. Mark Manendo and Clark County Commissioner Dario Herrera agreed with members of the Boulder Strip Association that indeed something needed to be done. Both politicians have helped expedite the project.

Herrera abandoned his seat behind the dais Tuesday to represent himself as a nearby resident of the area who strongly believes the government should step in and help clean up a highway cluttered with vagrants and boarded-up businesses.

"The Boulder Strip is an integral part of the older part of Las Vegas, and businesses depend on the economic vitality of the area," Herrera said. "We should provide the Boulder Strip the same opportunities we provide the Strip and downtown."

Because creating a special improvement district means small business owners must pay significant fees, the project wasn't without opposition.

Representatives for Don Jong, a business owner across the street from Boulder Station hotel-casino, argued that while casinos can afford assessment fees it's more difficult for small businesses.

Businesses will be assessed $193 per linear foot annually to landscape the median, install lighting and an irrigation system and to cover maintenance costs. To Jong, that means nearly $100,000 a year for two years.

The total cost for the two segments, which are considered demonstration projects that lay the foundation for completing a larger portion of the Boulder Strip, is $2.3 million.

According to lead planner Calvin Champlin, $500,000 has already been secured through a state enhancement program grant. When the money is received, assessment fees could drop to $150 per linear foot per year.

"We think we're getting an excellent deal for the amount of money," Champlin said. "It will make a significant difference once the vegetation grows out."

Active residents in the southeast valley realize that a landscaped median won't solve all of the problems in the area. They have convinced the township board to stop granting variances that allow store owners to keep merchandise in front of their shops and homeowners to pile junk in their front yards.

Landscaping is only the first step, they said.

The special improvement district ordinance will go into effect May 16, and Champlin anticipates it will take six months to design the project and put it out to bid.

Adrienne Packer covers county government for the Sun. She can be reached at (702) 259-2310 or by e-mail at adrienne@lasvegassun.com