Columnist Susan Snyder: Residents have a case of the Blues

Friday, Dec. 20, 2002 | 4:47 a.m.

By the end of the last week's round of public meetings, proposed development limits for Blue Diamond Hill were considered little more than a Christmas snow job.

The measure is the result of weeks of work by a county task force that hopes to head off such future nightmares as John Laing Homes' proposed 8,400-home subdivision on former John Hardie Mine acreage. The builder withdrew that proposal last fall after residents opposed it by the busload.

The Red Rock Design Overlay Expansion was unveiled during public meetings Monday and Tuesday. It calls for expanding an overlay zone that restricts building on private lands within the Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area. It would greatly restrict any development on the Hardie Mine property, called Blue Diamond Hill.

But Blue Diamond residents who would see the houses every day and valley residents who volunteer, work and play at Red Rock Canyon aren't sold. They want the Bureau of Land Management to buy the land and protect it from bulldozers and stucco.

And many were confused as to why some of their own, including a leader of the Red Rock Resistance movement and a local environmentalist, are working on the overlay plan.

Those who are confused include Jeannie Leavitt, a Blue Diamond storekeeper and town board member, who asks what happened to the resistance?

"They are deflecting us with this overlay," Leavitt said as she rang up sales in her store Tuesday morning. "We want the BLM to buy the mine. The energy people are putting into this overlay thing is breaking us up. We're being fragmented."

Three months ago Pauline VanBetten, a Blue Diamond resident and real estate agent, was leading the march against development. She now sits on the overlay task force.

The resistance is not crumbling, she said. The overlay is a last-ditch effort -- something to curtail the bleeding if a developer proposes another monstrosity while activists push Congress to buy.

"The resistance is alive and well," VanBetten said. "My position will not be watered down because I am sitting across the table from someone who has a different set of constituents."

Someone such as the representative for the Southern Nevada Homebuilders Association or the Howard Hughes Corp. They sit on the task force, too.

"This really is a fallback position. This is Plan C," said Dave Carlson, a county planner who is working with the task force on the overlay. "If everything else fails, and the owners want to develop, this is how we're going to deal with it."

They call it the reality of the situation.

But the reality is that few, if any, of the people who live here or who visit Red Rock from thousands of miles away want to see houses peeking over the ridgeline. Even if the overlay's 600-foot buffers are adopted, houses will be visible from Red Rock Loop Scenic Drive.

The reality is Clark County Commissioners could reject the overlay or alter it even if it does pass. The reality is that time and again local development has shown that plans on paper don't protect much.

Write your U.S. Congressional delegation. Tell them to Buy Blue Diamond Hill.

Call it their reality check.