Initiative could limit business growth

Jeffrey Libby

Thursday, April 4, 2002 | 11:09 a.m.

Hollywood producer and Boulder City native Anna Maria Davis has plans to build a $44 million major motion picture studio on 30 acres leased from the city.

She is negotiating options to expand the facility to 100 acres, creating the potential for hundreds of high-paying jobs as well as spillover business for local shops at a crucial time for the city -- a bypass planned for 2005 is expected to divert the majority of 7 million vehicles that travel the highway annually away from the downtown area, imperiling small businesses there.

But an initiative gaining signatures for the September ballot could thwart Davis' planned expansion, Mayor Bob Ferraro said. It could also stop future city-approved land leases that since 1999 have contributed $2.8 million annually to city revenues, delivering an improved quality of life that wouldn't otherwise be possible, he said.

Backers of the initiative -- many of whom support the movie studio -- say, however, that by limiting the city's ability to lease land they can better protect their small-town lifestyle, even while living within 20 miles of one of the fastest growing metropolitan areas in the country.

Under the proposal, it would require a public vote to lease more than an acre of city-owned land for more than 10 years.

"We think the City Council has an obligation to educate the voters and develop a consensus in the community before land is leased," said Vaughn Reuther, a computer programmer who is leading the initiative.

"Right now it's a divisive process. They (council members) run down all these paths and talk about it later."

On Tuesday the group submitted 622 signatures to the city clerk. For the initiative to appear on the ballot Sept. 3, 464 signatures must be validated.

In 1997 voters approved a law that required a public vote for the sale of more than an acre of city-owned land. The new law strengthened a growth-control ordinance passed in 1978 to prevent the development of large residential tract housing.

It also stopped a trend by the City Council of selling off parcels from 179 square miles of mostly raw desert bought by the city in 1995. The $1 million purchase from the federal government was made to create a buffer between the town of 14,800 and the rapidly expanding Las Vegas Valley, Bill Ferrence, manager of the Boulder City Credit Union, said.

More recently, a new City Council has started a new trend of leasing the land.

In 1997, the same year that voters passed the land-sale restriction, the city approved the first of several large land leases -- a lease of 138 acres at $800,000 annually for a natural gas-fired power plant 17 miles southwest of downtown in the El Dorado Valley.

A profit-sharing agreement with Eldorado Energy brings in another $800,000 annually for the city.

In August 1998 the city leased 800 acres just east of Railroad Pass at $750,000 annually to MGM Grand for a high-roller golf retreat. Park Place Entertainment now owns the site.

The city has also approved leases to telecommunications companies that bring in $320,000 annually in revenues.

"We have the largest city geographically in Nevada. We're larger (in area) than Chicago and San Francisco," Ferrence said. "And we're next to the fastest-growing area in the U.S. It may be far-fetched, but what if one council decided that a Del Webb Pulte needed to build a residential development with a 250-year lease? Would you care if you bought a house and it had a 250-year lease?"

Ferraro said those fears are unfounded, that Boulder City is dear to him and that he would not approve leases that would compromise the quality of life. At the same time, he said, without land leases, the city would suffer.

"With the leases we've been able to hire additional police officers and fire protection. Certainly we've added recreational opportunities," Ferraro said. "We wouldn't have Veterans Memorial Park without them and we wouldn't have the beautification (of streets and the downtown) either."

Between 1997 and 2001 the city increased its landscaping construction budget from $11,000 annually to $700,000, Bob Kenney, city finance director, said. In the same period the landscaping maintenance budget jumped from $410,000 to $803,000 proposed for 2002-2003.

"If this thing passes and we can't lease land and we can't sell land, that pretty much brings everything to a stop," Councilman Bryan Nix said. "The bottom line, philosophically, is that these people are hostile to government and don't want us making decisions." Andrew Davlin, a securities analyst finishing up his lunch at the Coffee Cup cafe on Monday, said in this case he distrusts the voting public more than government officials.

"I don't really like voters making decisions on individual real estate developments," Davlin said. "If they want to vote no more development in an area of town, that's one thing, but getting down to the nitty-gritty of a particular development -- I don't think they're qualified. They don't have the time to be." As for Davis -- who with production in 1997 of "Fools Rush In" became the first native Nevadan to produce a major motion picture -- she trusts the voters.

"It's safer for the citizens, because they can put contingencies in," she said.