Friday, Dec. 27, 2002 | 11:26 a.m.
Clark County's tangle of contentious zoning issues did not get much clearer Thursday, leaving the future of at least three high-profile land-use approvals up in the air.
Commissioner Chip Maxfield, one of five commissioners who voted for a controversial commercial development slated for county-owned land in Spring Valley, said he will not ask for formal reconsideration of the project.
The commission effectively approved converting 64 acres at Durango Drive and Warm Springs Road into a shopping center and office complex. A golf course had originally been planned for the land.
Opponents of the project had hoped that Maxfield, who voted for on the project Dec. 18, would make the request. County commission rules allow only those voting for a project to ask for reconsideration.
Maxfield said he wanted to avoid starting the new year with such a quarrelsome matter.
But while reconsideration of the Dec. 18 zoning vote is off the table, the project itself faces another hurdle. On Tuesday, Commissioner Yvonne Atkinson Gates asked county planning staff to schedule a Jan. 8 discussion of rezoning for the 64 acres.
The county land is to be leased by Las Vegas golf course magnate Billy Walters from the Clark County Aviation Department. Developers of other commercial projects nearby argue that the Walters project would be unfair competition.
Representatives of Walters have said they will fight the proposed rezoning.
Another project appeared to move closer to construction Thursday. Atkinson Gates, one of three sitting commissioners who has battled many controversial land-use proposals, said she had withdrawn a request to rezone land under a proposed 63-acre industrial park, which would be home to a new regional Pepsi distribution center.
That means that the zoning approved Nov. 20 could stand. Representatives of the developer had said legal action was likely if the commission again changed the zoning to make the industrial park impossible.
"That one was a little more problematic because money has already changed hands," Atkinson Gates said.
Neighbors of the project have filed suit to stop the industrial park.
A third project, a Woodside Homes development, will be under formal reconsideration Jan. 8. The county commission could overturn a Dec. 4 zoning approval for a 30-acre, 304-home development a few miles from the departures runway at McCarran International Airport.
The Clark County School District, the airport planning staff, the county planning and public works staffs, several advisory boards and Commissioner Bruce Woodbury, who represents the area, had all opposed the Dec. 4 zoning change.
Representatives of the developer have argued that the concern about aircraft noise is overstated, and that the project would add the type of affordable housing that the county needs.
The three projects' future is cloudy in large part because two members of the seven-person county commission leave office this month. Commissioners Erin Kenny and Dario Herrera supported the three most controversial projects as well as dozens of others that sparked community opposition.
But the duo will be replaced by two newcomers who have pledged greater deference to long-range development master plans.
Rory Reid and Mark James, elected in November, will be sworn in Jan. 7.
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