Slow growth expected course for the future

Dan Kulin

Thursday, Dec. 4, 2003 | 9:05 a.m.

While Clark County's population skyrocketed during the past 11 years, Boulder City has grown at a relative snail's pace, and, with a proposed new plan for growth and development headed to the City Council next week, it appears city leaders and residents want to keep the pace and policies that guided the city through the 1990s.

Boulder City's slow growth is largely the result of a law that limits residential building permits to 120 a year and a city requirement that sales of more than one acre of city-owned land be approved by the voters. The impact of this rule is important because almost all of the vacant land in the city is owned by the city.

According to state figures, from 1991 to 2002 Clark County's population grew by about 85.5 percent. During that same period Boulder City grew about 14.5 percent, which is nearly identical to the national population growth rate during that time.

To plan for what growth does come to Boulder City, the city uses a master plan, also called a comprehensive plan, which is set to be updated Tuesday for the first time in a dozen years.

The proposed new master plan, which calls for little change to the plan adopted in 1991, was unanimously supported by the city Planning Commission on Wednesday. The City Council is scheduled to vote on the roughly 130-page document on Tuesday.

The proposed plan calls for directing what growth might come to the western side of the city around the municipal Boulder Creek Golf Club.

Minor changes to the plan were suggested and some accepted during the Wednesday night public hearing on the plan before the commission.

The commission decided to change a chapter on downtown into an appendix to the document. Suggestions from some in the audience that the city airport needed a designated buffer zone were addressed by staff, who said the open land designation in the plan serves as a buffer.

Former City Councilman Bill Smith, who lost a bid to be mayor earlier this year by 18 votes, said the plan should include information on a hoped-for highway bypass that would direct traffic around downtown. In July the council and commission members decided the plan should not include a discussion of the bypass largely because a final route for the road hasn't been determined.

But the main pieces of the plan, the suggested land uses for property throughout the city, haven't drawn much criticism.

Smith said he thinks the plan hasn't drawn a lot of attention because most people don't know about it. But Smith said overall the plan puts what growth may come in the best possible place.

Smith agreed that the area around the new golf course "is the logical place for growth. It's flat, easily developable, the utilities and everything else are already there."

Mayor Bob Ferraro, who has butted heads with Smith on city plans and policies in the past, also said the proposed master plan is a good blueprint for future growth.

Ferraro said the more than yearlong public process of developing the new master plan has left the city with a plan that most residents are happy with, and he said he expects the council will approve the plan.

Some said that the plan's apparent smooth sailing is due to the lack of major changes suggested in the plan.

Frank Freer, a barber in downtown Boulder City, said that while his shop is typically a place where the local customers air their complaints, he hasn't heard anything about the pending master plan.

"People can get real excited over here, real involved with the city," Freer said. But despite their differences, most city residents agree they want Boulder City to remain a small town.