Letter: Master planning does not exist in southwest

Friday, Dec. 13, 2002 | 9:04 a.m.

I found the last paragraph of your Dec. 10 article regarding the controversy over re-zoning under the airport flight path interesting.

You quoted incoming County Commissioner Rory Reid as saying: "The general rule has to be that the master plan prevails ... A lot of people went to a lot of work to plan their communities."

I live near the property of controversy (just west of Rainbow and Russell). In my neighborhood, the cheap fencing on abandoned lots, marked with McCarran Airport trespassing signs, are the items that prevail.

These abandoned lots with trash blowing against the temporary fencing look like a post-war landscape claimed by nobody with a clear development plan.

I would seriously challenge anyone to argue that this patchwork of garbage-laden abandoned lots intertwined with housing developments qualifies as a "master plan" that has been rigorously planned by a group of forward-thinking people. Rather, this landscape appears to be the product of random airport acquisition without county concern for any master planning whatsoever.

I would encourage the incoming county commissioners to do their homework before proclaiming that current "non-Summerlin" communities in the southwestern part of the valley have been "master-planned." In reality, these developments have universally been "master-ignored" by this commission.

Hey, how about at least a park in this blown-out airport-controlled area?

BRETT RIDDLE