Further study is sought for downtown area

Jeffrey Libby

Wednesday, July 31, 2002 | 10:35 a.m.

At the end of a successful five-year downtown buying spree, directed in part by hundreds of thousands of dollars in market studies, Henderson redevelopment staffers now own a graded, mostly vacant 4 1/2-acre lot.

But the talk suddenly isn't about new construction, something the city has wanted and the downtown hasn't seen since 1998. Instead, it's talk of another study.

The difficulty, city staff and Realtors say, is that even with the best planning and with ownership of an enviable corner parcel, downtown Water Street remains as stubbornly low-brow today as it was five years ago.

As city planners are discovering, market forces, at least for now, may prevent them from remaking the old downtown into a marketplace more like its younger and more upscale neighbor, Green Valley.

Not that it has ever been easy or expected to happen overnight. Since March 1997, the city's redevelopment agency has spent more than $3 million to obtain the southwest corner of Water Street and Victory Road -- a gateway to downtown Henderson -- buying and bulldozing homes in the hopes of building a commercial complex to help steady the city's tottering business center.

As of Tuesday, that goal appeared to have been largely achieved: Agency staff have signed a tentative agreement to buy a real estate office, the last of 22 targeted properties, for $437,500. If, as expected, the sale is finalized this September by a board vote, the redevelopment agency will own a 4 1/2-acre, boomerang-shaped parcel nestled between a businessman's motel, a thriving motorcycle shop and a neighborhood of scrappy World War II-era homes.

But after the long haul, Bob Wilson, manager of the redevelopment agency, said he has no plans to issue a request for proposals any time soon. Not within one month. Not within two or three. He didn't want to commit to a date.

"When we start talking to businessmen, they say they're going to have trouble getting loans or getting tenants," Wilson said. "We talked to six different Realtors and got six different opinions. But for the most part, they said we're not going to get the national chains. There may be a Starbucks in our future, but it's not going to be this year."

A downtown market study completed in December at a cost of more than $165,000 is helpful, said Wilson and Ned Madonia, the city's redevelopment project coordinator. But it now appears to be more a starting point than the blueprint it was first hailed as.

"We don't have precise plans for that specific corner," Madonia said.

Even so, Madonia and Wilson are still reluctant to give up the path to redevelopment described by Chicago-based Clarion Associates. It was Clarion, after all, that first began the talk of building residential lofts above storefronts.

And in the most basic plans for the 4 1/2-acre parcel, Wilson talks of a three-story complex with retail on the first floor, office space on the second floor and condos or apartments on the third floor.

That's because the main obstacle to downtown redevelopment, city officials, consultants and Realtors all agree, is the relatively small population base surrounding the downtown area. For its study, Clarion assumed a base of roughly 50,000 people living in the immediate area, while noting that in 2000, downtown had just 13,800 people living within a mile of Water Street.

Downtown needs more people, and people with more money, the experts say.

One of those experts is Kit Graski, a real estate broker for CB Richard Ellis who says he has had a hand in almost every major shopping center built in the Las Vegas Valley in the last 18 years.

"The reality of it is, the Henderson downtown isn't the hub where everyone is looking to do retail," Graski said. "The city will have to give retailers an immense amount of money to convince them to open there. Essentially, they'll have to say, 'I'll build your building for free.' "

If lofts are going to work in the valley, Graski said, they will probably be built closer to the Strip.

"That part of Henderson is basically a blue-collar town."

Gloria Sprouse, a resident of downtown Manganese Street since 1985, agreed, saying there is no need for Nordstrom or other boutiques downtown.

She was striding across the vacant 4 1/2-acre lot Tuesday in 110-degree heat, back from dropping her car off for repairs and in a hurry to reach the cool of her living room.

"Honey, the people here work at Timet. They just want to do their job, go home and relax. They don't want to put on a tie and get dressed up to go out to eat," the casino dealer said.

"We're a peculiar group. We can live with the chlorine gas leaks, the rocket fuel explosions and the magnesium flare-ups. We just don't want to be bothered by the outside world. And if we really need anything, we can just go to the Galleria Mall."

But some small business owners are optimistic about a revival, even if no new buildings have gone up downtown since 1998, when the now-defunct Water St. Coffee Co. tore down an old home, put up a new building and created a short-lived sensation at City Hall with its gourmet coffees and sandwiches.

"I think it will look pretty good around here," said Leonard Smith, who is investing $20,000 of his own money along with $76,000 in city aid to dress up his four downtown storefronts.

Among other improvements, Smith is extending his roofline to the curb, "like it looks in Scottsdale, Arizona," he said.

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