Enterprise area gets zoning guide

Thursday, Aug. 22, 2002 | 9:21 a.m.

Residents of a fast-growing community in the southwest Las Vegas Valley hope that a new land-use guide approved Wednesday will protect the rural pockets remaining in their area.

The Clark County Commission approved without dissent a neighborhood plan for the 3,100-acre area, roughly bordered by Blue Diamond Road and Windmill Lane, and the Union Pacific Railroad line and Hualapai Way in the township of Enterprise.

The plan does not "hard-zone" the area, but gives developers, new and existing residents and county planning staff a blueprint for anticipated future development. The plan is the product of more than four months of work and contributions by hundreds of residents, businesses, developers and the county staff.

"It provides a framework to how decisions should be made in the future," said county planner Dionicio Gordillo, who worked on the effort. "That is the last remaining huge chunk in Enterprise that didn't have a plan to it."

Residents from the area hope that the plan will help protect rural areas. About 70 percent of the area now will be included in Rural Neighborhood Preservation zones, said plan advocate and resident Susan Ivy Allen.

Allen was co-chairwoman of the ad hoc committee that largely drafted the plan.

Rural Neighborhood Preservation zones generally give greater legal zoning protections to keep areas from intensive development.

"This reinforces the fact that this area is rural," she said. "We need to have some areas of the valley that are not so densely developed."

Still, a handful of developers objected to particular points of the plan at the zoning meeting Wednesday. Some of their objections came down to half-acre parcels.

And what the County Commission can do, it can undo. The development plan is a guide, not a firm plan, warned Commissioner Myrna Williams.

Allen said she knows that residents in the area will still have to watch and sometimes fight proposed zoning changes. She said residents still worry about what the future holds for the community.

"I would be insane not to worry. But we won today," Allen said.