Planners reject bid by investors

Mathis Winkler

Thursday, Jan. 24, 2002 | 10:12 a.m.

Investors in a mortgage company's fraudulent scheme will have to take their case to the North Las Vegas City Council and possibly to the courts, after planning commissioners early today refused to let them complete a half-built mobile home park.

Trying to recoup their losses, the investors want to sell the 40-acre parcel on the corner of North Fifth Street and Washburn Road. But commissioners, in a meeting that went past midnight, said the permits to build the park expired in 1998, and any developer would have to apply for them again.

A buyer has offered $4 million for the site if he is allowed to finish the project under the old permit. Otherwise investors might only get $2 million for the land.

Backed by Assemblymen Tom Collins and Bob Price, both D-North Las Vegas, several investors, who now own the property, pleaded with commissioners to make an exception.

"Many investors have passed on, several have lost their home and some are barely getting by on Social Security benefits," said Loretta Eichelberger, who has $30,000 invested in the project. "This has been a worry for more than four years. I would like to see this issue resolved as soon as possible so that I can sleep at night and get on with my life."

The mobile home park's is the last of 44 loans handled by the defunct Harley L. Harmon mortgage company, and about 165 investors are still waiting to get back almost $7 million.

Harmon, a former speaker pro tem and Democratic majority leader of the Assembly, is scheduled to go to trial in April on mail fraud charges.