Shedding the ‘Northtown’ image

Mathis Winkler

Friday, Jan. 18, 2002 | 4:34 a.m.

Teresa and Ryan Norman didn't want to move to North Las Vegas. They preferred the lush landscaping of their old neighborhood in the Las Vegas Valley's northwest to the concrete sprawl they encountered in the city.

Teresa Norman bought their old, 900-square-foot home for less than $100,000 on her teacher's salary in 1996. But four years later booming growth and rising housing prices in the northwest made it impossible for the Normans to find an affordable, bigger home on their two salaries.

"We can't afford what we want in Summerlin," said Ryan Norman, who works as a pilot for a small airline.

That's why they turned to North Las Vegas, where they found the perfect house -- a model home fully furnished and with upgrades such as tiled floors -- for $30,000 less than the going price in their old neighborhood. The couple has been living there since April.

Teresa Norman, however, is still struggling to come to terms with her new hometown.

"When I write my address on letters, I sometimes leave off the 'North' in North Las Vegas," she said. Living here is just not something she likes to brag about.

City officials don't like to hear about such feelings and keep insisting that North Las Vegas no longer deserves to be seen as the crime-ridden, scruffy and poor neighbor of Las Vegas.

"If people don't like their address," Mayor Michael Montandon said, there are plenty of other residents like him who "are proud of their city." To illustrate his point, he noted that about 1,000 people move to North Las Vegas each month.

Montandon, who settled in North Las Vegas in 1993 because of cheap home prices, said he didn't even know that he lived in the city until he hooked up his water service.

Shedding an image

Along with his City Council colleagues, Montandon hopes that upscale neighborhoods and lavish landscaping in a proposed master-planned community on 1,900 acres at the city's northern end will do away with North Las Vegas' image.

City officials approved the project Wednesday. With investments estimated at more than $1 billion, it's the biggest single project ever to come into town.

Even without the new community, which some describe as North Las Vegas' Green Valley or Summerlin, explosive growth over the past decade has changed the city, Municipal Court Judge Warren VanLandschoot said.

"We have our own Kmarts, Wal-Marts and Home Depots," said VanLandschoot, who has been a resident for 46 years. "You can shop here and go to restaurants. Things are coming along."

True, the number of murders in North Las Vegas doubled in 2001, but bad things happen all over the valley, he said.

"Henderson, Las Vegas, Clark County -- they all have areas that aren't conducive to taking a midnight walk," VanLandschoot said. "That doesn't mean everyone in these areas is bad."

Asked why North Las Vegas still gets singled out as a dangerous place to go, the former police officer offers a comparison that's close to his line of work.

"It's like a person who's committed a crime and who has rehabilitated himself," he said. "He will always have the stigma of having done jail time."

Competing for resources

As North Las Vegas continues to expand northward, city officials are struggling to make sure that residents in the older areas don't feel neglected.

But Vytas Vaitkus, city finance director for the last 18 years, said there's never enough money in the budget "to do everything for everybody."

Tight funds force city leaders to balance the needs of different areas and decide where improvements are needed the most, Vaitkus said.

Councilman William Robinson, who has lived in the city since 1960 and became a council member in 1983, said he doesn't want people to see North Las Vegas as two different cities.

"I view it as one municipality, with a mature part and a newer part," he said. "I'm going to work like hell as long as I'm here to make sure there's no division."

Bill Dolan, who moved to a newer section in 1993, gave city leaders credit for trying to build bridges between the old and new neighborhoods.

"When a lot of us first moved here, it was Northtown and it was us," Dolan said, adding that he no longer feels embarrassed about the city's older sections.

But with the imminent arrival of North Las Vegas' first master-planned community, Dolan said he's starting to worry that residents in his area will have to compete for city dollars with the proposed community.

"We don't want (city officials) to stop thinking about the whole city," he said.

Dolan, Hidden Canyon Homeowners Association president, sees a plan to build the city's second library in the new community instead of his neighborhood as only the start of a trend -- one that he opposes. He said he's planning to challenge Councilwoman Shari Buck for her council seat in 2003 and wants to make the library issue a campaign platform.

City officials say they don't have the money to build the library in the middle of town and are more likely to get private funding from developers of the master-planned community.

Where community is found

Issues such as the location of a new library that pit one neighborhood against another make it difficult to create a sense of community, despite glossy promotional brochures that plug North Las Vegas as "one vital community."

And elected leaders said they don't think the master-planned community will suddenly boost residents' feelings about their town.

"People are really concerned about their neighborhoods," Buck said. "The 1,900 acres are going to be somebody else's home."

In a place such as Clark County, where municipal boundaries blur and sand-colored neighborhoods blend into each other, it's hard to foster a sense of community that reaches beyond a few blocks down the road.

Bob Parker, a University of Nevada, Las Vegas, sociology professor, calls the Las Vegas Valley a "multinucleated megalopolis" -- a mouthful that describes an area of urban sprawl made up of neighborhoods without clear borders.

"I think people lack a sense of community," Parker said, adding that things such as community centers and libraries are needed to attract people and create a gathering space.

A resident since 1991, Councilwoman Stephanie Smith said she found her sense of community immediately within her housing tract.

"Moving to North Las Vegas, I was more concerned about my neighborhood than the city," Smith said. "That's where I spend most of my time."

It took Shirley Hogan a little longer to get comfortable in her neighborhood.

Having lost her job and no longer able to afford her rent, the single mother moved a decade ago to an uninviting and somewhat dilapidated apartment complex near Owens Avenue and Interstate 15 run by the North Las Vegas Housing Authority.

While almost 95 percent of homes in the Normans' predominantly white neighborhood miles north are occupied by their owners, Hogan's part of town is mainly Hispanic, and 73 percent of the population are renters, according to 2000 Census figures.

When she first moved there, gunshots and drug dealers were part of the daily backdrop as were Hogan's unemployed neighbors, who would ask her where she was coming from when she would return from work at night.

"I'd close my door and that was it," she said, sitting in her sparkling clean living room on a sofa covered with plastic for protection.

While Hogan has since come to appreciate her neighbors and even served as president of the complex's resident council, things still aren't perfect around her neighborhood.

"The streets could be improved, there's still an element of drugs that I'm concerned with," Hogan said. "It's not like you don't hear gunfire or see cop cars."

But the 44-year-old, who now handles paperwork for a medical center, hasn't given up hope for the neighborhood that has become her home.

The problems "didn't happen overnight and they will not be solved overnight," she said. "But we can shine like anybody else."

Not that she plans to stick around much longer. Once her 17-year-old daughter, Sabrina, graduates from Rancho High School this year, Hogan is hoping to move into a newer part of town.

"Basically what I want is a condo," she said. "I want a bigger place. I want a room so that I can do some crafts, and it's time (to move.)"

The old part of town

Others, such as Councilman Robert Eliason, plan to stay put in the area around City Hall at the southern end of the city. Some refer to this original part of the city as downtown North Las Vegas even though others, including the mayor, say their city has no downtown since it just kind of expanded as a suburb of Las Vegas.

Eliason, who grew up in this older part of town and now lives down the street from his childhood home, said the widely held perceptions of his neighborhood as a crime-ridden area are simply not true.

"It's still very much family-oriented," said Eliason, whose house stands at the end of a well-groomed cul-de-sac that bears little resemblance to some of older part's shadier areas.

"We really take care and watch out for each other," he added.

People who look down on the city "have never been here," Eliason said. "They're scared. I'll walk down any street with them."

Except "a few streets behind City Hall," maybe. Even Eliason said he'd probably avoid them if possible.

Having neglected the older parts as growth in the city's northwest began to take off, city officials still have work to do to fix up parks and clean up its older neighborhoods, Eliason said.

But "the old North Las Vegas used-car-lot city is no longer," he said. "We're ready to move."

Even city cheerleaders say that the older parts need a drastic revamp to draw in residents from other neighborhoods.

People living in the city's new tract homes "have as little to do with this area as people who live in Green Valley," said Laura Coleman, who owns the Poker Palace casino on Las Vegas Boulevard North and serves as co-chairwoman of the North Las Vegas community steering committee, an organization that aims to improve the city's image.

So far, residents of the newer areas have no reason to come to the old part of town, "unless they have to go pay their water bill at City Hall," Coleman said. "Realistically, they are not coming over here, and they make sure their car doors are locked before they drive in here.

"They don't think of themselves as associated with what's going on here. (North Las Vegas) just happens to be their address."

A Hispanic-themed shopping district that builds on the large Hispanic population could change the area's image and draw people from all over the valley to old North Las Vegas, Coleman said.

"I just think people stick to their neighborhoods," said Coleman, who seems almost apologetic about working but not living in North Las Vegas. "We need to give them more of a reason to come here."

Local developers have already proposed a $12 million shopping center across the street from Coleman's casino and hope to have it up and running in less than two years.

But Sharon Powers, North Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce executive director, said city officials will have to lay the groundwork and clean up the area if they want businesspeople to move in.

"Until it starts looking a little bit nicer, it'll be really hard to convince people to come here," Powers said. "If you have a choice between a newer section of town as opposed to a run-down section of town, it's not rocket science to figure out which one you'll choose."

Not the old neighborhood

Teresa Norman, who attended Rancho High School while her family lived in the old part of town in the early 1980s, said the area has changed dramatically since then.

"I didn't grow up with everybody speaking Spanish," she said. "It's so not the old neighborhood I grew up in."

Still, Norman has chosen to teach third graders at a school in the old part of town even though she says she could easily get a job in the suburbs. Her husband, who said he would not have bought a house south of Craig Road, isn't too happy about the location of his wife's school.

But "you teach where you're happy," Teresa Norman said.

Until the 1,900 acres are developed, the Normans will keep driving on the weekend for family walks in Summerlin and Desert Shores, where lakes and lavishly landscaped neighborhoods make for nicer strolls.

But despite the trade-offs, North Las Vegas "is a good place to be right now," Ryan Norman said. "It's not good or bad. It is what it is."