Columnist Susan Snyder: Enterprising action can halt sprawl

Friday, Aug. 31, 2001 | 4:02 a.m.

Susan Snyder's column also appears Tuesdays and Fridays in the Las Vegas Sun. Reach her at snyder@lasvegassun.com or 259-4082.

A school. A drugstore. A subdivision.

We're building them all over hell's half-acre around here. But this school is one Spring Valley residents don't want. Ditto for the drugstore and its accompanying office center.

And residents say a proposed zoning change will bring the subdivision that will ruin the "rural atmosphere" of life in Enterprise, an area just off Interstate 15 and Blue Diamond Road.

I'm the first one to say give us more sagebrush and less pavement. There are four Starbucks within walking distance of my home, and a fifth should open by year's end. How much coffee can a neighborhood drink?

But we live in the fastest growing metropolitan area in the country. The same weather, job opportunities and lifestyle luring people here now lured people here 10 years ago. And it's been the same struggle all over the West for more than a century. Everybody wants to live here, and everybody wants to close the gate once they're in.

Granted, the Bureau of Land Management owned much of the land in Enterprise until a land swap changed that three years ago. But Interstate 15 is a major highway -- a major highway from here to Utah and California.

Did people honestly expect the entire area would remain as-is while every available inch of space along other sections was being heavily developed? Federal land is up for barter, swap or steal. Ask an American Indian.

I feel badly for the folks in Enterprise. They fought the land swap and lost. Now they want to be paid what their land is worth, and it seems they will lose that, too.

But if their land wasn't in question at the moment, would they take an evening to help the people of Spring Valley protest construction of a school or an office complex that those residents say will ruin the rural flavor of their community? Will any of us? It is hard to imagine that residents actually consider the proposed school site at Twain Avenue and Buffalo Drive "rural." One of the Las Vegas Sun reporters covering this issue says it is rural "by Las Vegas standards."

And that's the ticket to this whole mess: Las Vegas standards. Right now those call for a sprawling western town with tract housing, a Target on every corner and single-occupant car trips.

We want the Wal-Mart and the latte shop as long as the shopping center is six miles away from our "rural" home. Oh, and we want a new 10-lane freeway so it doesn't take more than seven minutes to get there. We reap what we buy.

If you don't like what's going up in your back yard, fight it. Then fight it again when they try to build it behind somebody else's house on the other side of town. Stand up and be heard. Skip dinner and go to the hearings.

And if that doesn't work, then let's do better than a 12-percent voter turnout in a primary and a 45-percent turnout in a general election. If we've ended up with lousy representation, it's our own fault.

A school. A drugstore. A subdivision.

They could go in behind your house next year. So join that far-flung neighbor in his battle and never forget the golden rule of urban development:

What they do unto others, they can do unto you.