Residents still aggravated by U.S. 95 project

Wednesday, Nov. 29, 2000 | 11:04 a.m.

Meeting tonight

The Nevada Department of Transportation will hold another public meeting tonight to discuss aspects of the controversial U.S. 95 widening project.

The meeting will focus on expanding U.S. 95 from Cheyenne Avenue to Craig Road to add high-occupancy vehicle lanes both northbound and southbound. Much of the work will occur in residential areas, and the meeting will focus on proposed sound walls through those areas.

The meeting will be from 4 to 7 p.m. in the Molasky Middle School cafeteria, 7801 W. Gilmore Ave.

The agency will accept verbal or written comments.

They came, mostly, to find out what will happen to their homes, and when.

Like other meetings over the past months and years, a crowd of concerned homeowners came to a meeting on the ongoing U.S. 95 widening project armed with little information, but a lot of questions.

Few of them got the answers they were looking for.

"It's been years," said an exasperated Joyce Anderson, an Austin Avenue resident.

Anderson has seen her neighborhood deteriorate over four years as homeowners either bailed out of the area, or stopped making improvements, in anticipation of the Nevada Department of Transportation buying the properties to widen the highway.

But she still doesn't have a firm commitment from the state to buy her home, or a firm timetable for when the purchase will come.

"It's been meetings all the time," Anderson said. "They can't give us a time frame.

"All of us who live right there in that area are so tired of not knowing," she said.

Anderson and about 100 other homeowners attended the meeting at Western High School, billed as an informational meeting on bridge overpasses that will have to be built at Torrey Pines Drive, Decatur Boulevard and Valley View Boulevard over the highway.

The scheduled work is one of five phases of work for the highway expansion, work that NDOT promises will help ease the daily traffic congestion on the road. Planned is a 10-lane highway from Martin Luther King Boulevard to Rainbow Avenue and a six-lane highway from Summerlin Parkway past Cheyenne Avenue in the Las Vegas Valley's northwest.

Construction is scheduled to begin on the highway overpasses in March and conclude by early 2004. The overall project, budgeted at about $350 million including $100 million for rights-of-way acquisition, is scheduled to wrap up in 2006.

Along the way, the state will have to buy about 200 homes, according to transportation department planners. Other homeowners who live nearby the projected route of the expansion, however, are also concerned that they may soon be living next door to one of the valley's busiest roads.

The engineers, right-of-way specialists and others from the Nevada Department of Transportation tried to answer the question posed by the homeowners.

Steven Henson, a right-of-way specialist for the state, said he didn't have all the answers for the folks.

"It's difficult," he said. "Until the design is set, we can't say for positive which property will be acquired."

Some aspects of the design, such as the overpasses, are close to fruition. About 50 homes should be affected by that work, Henson said.

But the final designs for other sections isn't scheduled to begin until next year, and they might not be set for months or even years to come. Henson said his department is doing all that it can to keep people informed of what will happen to their property "within the limits of the law."

While most of the residents who attended the meeting say they just want an answer to the question of their properties' future, not everyone is a fan of the widening project. Barbara Roth, a Sierra Club activist, attended the meeting to tell homeowners that the group will likely sue to stop the expansion.

The organization, nationally and locally, fears that widening highways or building new ones simply adds to sprawl, and that such highways affect the health of people living nearby. The group wants government funds to go to mass transit and environmentally friendly movers instead.

The group recently filed an intent-to-sue notice with the federal courts to force the Federal Highway Administration, which is funding most of the expansion, to do further environmental impact studies.

That didn't please all of the homeowners.

"Let them go with this project," Anderson said. Her neighborhood "is so dilapidated, it's beyond fixing."

Charles Rizzardi lives nearby on Austin Avenue.

"People just don't want to invest the money to upgrade their homes," said the the 30-year resident of the neighborhood.

Rizzardi and his neighbor, Midge Sparlin, say they are trapped until the state pays for their homes. They can't sell, don't have the money to move and don't want to invest in a home that will be torn down.

Their frustration with the state goes back decades. Sparlin and Rizzardi said they were promised a sound wall when U.S. 95 was constructed atop Freemont Street in the mid-1970s.

"We're still waiting for that sound wall," Sparlin said.

Les Fadness, a firefighter for the state, lives nearby the planned expansion, but said he doesn't think his home will be directly affected. He thinks the expansion is necessary, but is concerned about the disturbances it means for some of his friends and neighbors.

"As far as the city's enhanced traffic flow, it's a good thing," he said. "It's sad to see that people are going to have to give up what they've had for 40 years."

But "it's either that, or fatal gridlock for everybody," he said.

Bob McKenzie, NDOT spokesman, said he understands the concerns expressed by those attending the meeting.

"It's fear of the unknown," he said. But those fears will abate as the project progresses over the course of the coming months, McKenzie said.

Many of those homeowners will have a better idea of where the highway will be and when the state will purchase those homes, he said.

The roadwork is necessary to serve the huge population boom in the Northwest part of the valley, especially as a route to the Strip, where most of the jobs are, he said.

McKenzie said homeowners shouldn't fear the lawsuit promised by the Sierra Club.

"We've done everything by the book," he said, noting that the Federal Highway Administration approved the state's environmental impact study for the widening early this year.