Rural lifestyle fading as city grows west

Jeffrey Libby

Monday, Jan. 20, 2003 | 10:58 a.m.

The way Francis and Arlene Stringer see it, developers can't arrive soon enough to bulldoze their 2 1/2-acre Henderson homestead.

Since 1988 the Stringers have kept horses, longhorn cattle and a llama on the 2 1/2 acres that surround their four-bedroom house south of St. Rose Parkway, not far from Las Vegas Boulevard. It's a place where just two years ago it made sense to hitch the horses to an antique buggy and trot alongside the two-lane road.

But now, at rush hour, traffic backs up as much as a mile, and after nightfall the lights of Anthem and Seven Hills light up the formerly pitch-black skies.

The burgeoning suburbs of Henderson are spreading rapidly toward the Stringers' little spread. Manicured lawns and upscale homes are expected to soon roll over the last of the wide-open rural spaces in the south end of the Las Vegas Valley, and they're ready to cede their spread to the coming development.

On Jan. 28 the Henderson City Council is expected to approve plans that would guide development across 6,722 mostly federally owned acres of desert stretching southwest from St. Rose Parkway and the Henderson Executive Airport to Las Vegas Boulevard.

The plans sketch out the last phase of what has already been a 30-year surge west by Henderson. It began with the annexation and master-planning of Green Valley in 1974. Henderson soon was transformed from a small industrial town into one of the fastest growing cities in the nation.

But Henderson probably won't stop growing, even if it has to head south out of the Las Vegas Valley into the Ivanpah Valley, following Interstate 15 to the outpost of Jean.

"We haven't designed it (the 6,722 acres) as a final frontier," Bonnie Rinaldi, assistant city manager, said.

During recent meetings with Clark County air quality officials, Rinaldi said, "We did some things to preserve our options in the Ivanpah Valley."

The prospect of spreading into that valley, however, is more than a decade down the road, Rinaldi said. In the meantime, city officials are focused on preparing for a scheduled November auction of 1,920 acres, the largest ever offered in the Las Vegas Valley by the Bureau of Land Management.

The parcel is slightly larger than the 1,905 acres auctioned in North Las Vegas in May 2001.

Future auction dates have yet to be scheduled for the remaining 4,802 acres in western Henderson, but city officials expect 63,250 residents to eventually settle there.

Draft documents map development of 24,000 homes, nine schools, two libraries, two fire stations, and a police station.

About 332 acres of parks would serve the new neighborhoods, supplying 5.25 acres of park per 1,000 residents, according to the plans.

And in a first for Henderson, the city could require 10 percent of the new homes to be "work force housing," built at affordable rates, officials said.

The homes must be affordable for people earning from 60 percent to 120 percent of the average median income as established annually by the Department of Housing and Urban Development. The current median income of $54,300 would require home prices ranging from $109,000 to $217,000.

"Those houses are there today, and we just want to ensure that they continue to be there," David Norris, a senior city planner, said. "Not everyone can afford to live in the Anthem Country Club."

Affordable but comfortably upscale suburbs is what Green Valley first offered on a large scale in the early 1970s after Henderson annexed its 6,000 acres, jumping west over U.S. 95 for the first time.

In the subsequent 33 years, the small town grew from 50 square miles to 94 square miles, with almost all 44 square miles added through the push west across federal and unincorporated Clark County land.

In-fill development pushed homes north and east to borders with Las Vegas, Clark County and the national park system. The McCullough Range defined the southern limits.

But to the west, the open, federally owned desert made possible the large master-planned communities that have come to define Henderson. In the mid-1990s, the city annexed 5,000 acres for development of Anthem and another 1,300 acres for development of Seven Hills.

"It's just been a steady march west," Bob Wilson, a city property management planner, said.

Along the way, Henderson's population swelled from 16,400 in 1970 to more than 210,000 today.

If that total does grow by another 30 percent in the coming years, the way planners anticipate, the Stringers say they won't be around to see it.

They say their rural life in Henderson was fine while it lasted. They'll have their memories of their longhorn bull, Al, butting a giant rubber ball around the acreage. And for now they still have coyotes coming at night to drink water from pans.

But Francis Stringer, a city waste water operator, said he's glad that the city is nearly upon him.

"I'm anxiously awaiting it," he said as he and his wife strolled along a gravel road near their home. "I want to make some money off this place and head back to Colorado."

Because of traffic tie-ups each evening at Las Vegas Boulevard and St. Rose, they sold their horses and antique buggy two years ago, they said.

"It was nice 10 years ago. It was quiet. There was nothing around us," Arlene said.

But illegal dumping is becoming more common, as are kids in cars stopping to party off the road running by the Stringer's home.

"Let 'em put a 7-Eleven here," Francis said. "I've had enough of the gambling, the heat, no water and no trees and too many people and unplanned development."