Planners deny request for high school near orchard

Will Oremus

Friday, July 25, 2003 | 11:22 a.m.

The Las Vegas Planning Commission sent a stern message to planners from the Clark County School District Thursday night, unanimously denying their request to rezone an undeveloped 36-acre plot in the Lone Mountain area to accommodate a 2,700-student high school.

After more than two hours of discussion -- much of it in the form of pleas from area residents to protect the adjacent Gilcrease Orchard by building a less imposing facility on the site -- commissioners rebuked the planners for their lack of collaboration with the community.

"I believe that this is a school site," commission Chairman Richard Truesdell said. "But there are some very unique things about this site that should be at least considered, and I don't think between the last meeting and this meeting 10 minutes was given to coming up with an alternative."

The Planning Commission two weeks ago had asked the school district to explore ways to make the building more compatible with the surrounding land, including the orchard. Residents of this fast-growing outpost in northwest Las Vegas view their neighborhood as agricultural and object strongly to a "cookie-cutter urban school" being built there.

School district planner Matt LaCroix said that the area cannot do without a new, full-size high school, given its rate of growth.

"They perceive that they are a very rural community, but right next to them you have standard higher-density residential subdivisions," he said. "To build a smaller school, you would just have to start building more of them."

LaCroix said the school district will take the proposal to the City Council on Aug. 20.

"The City Council has the final say," he said. "We'll move with the same plan, same design, and hopefully the City Council recognizes the need for the school site."

Opponents of the proposal said they would continue to fight it until the school district exhibited a more cooperative spirit.

"My frustration is that Matt LaCroix from the school district, even at the end, still didn't seem to get it that working with the community would help his cause," said Rob Ramage, who lives near the proposed site.

Ramage was not alone. Close to 100 opponents of the school district's plans crowded City Council chambers, cheering one another and occasionally grumbling or whistling at LaCroix's statements.

Several neighborhood children took the microphone during the public comment session to extoll the virtues of the orchard, the only one of its kind in Southern Nevada. LaCroix said the orchard could survive with the school as a next-door neighbor, but the residents who frequent it were skeptical.

Many used words like "arrogant" and "bully" to describe the school district's disregard for previous suggestions that the site be used for a smaller, agriculturally focused magnet school.

"It was the unanimous wish of this commission that the school district develop a different project ... (but they returned with) substantially the same project," Commissioner Steven Evans said. "I call that hubris."

"If we destroy this area as a consequence of growth, it's forever," he continued. "And if that happens, shame on us."

LaCroix agreed that it would be ideal to custom-build schools to suit their sites, but said the practice would be prohibitively expensive and would raise issues of equity.

"Does this community deserve a smaller, custom design?" LaCroix said. "And if they do, why shouldn't every community have a custom design that's made for their needs? You wouldn't be able to afford to customize every school and still meet what we guaranteed the taxpayers to build, which is 88 schools."

Ramage wasn't convinced.

"I understand the economies of scale of one-size-fits-all," he said. "But every community has specific needs, and if these needs aren't met, then the school district is not doing anyone a service."

Bill Gilcrease, one of the two octogenarian brothers who sold the land to the school district two years ago, attended the meeting to show his support for neighbors who now oppose the district's plans.

He said he and his brother had intended to do the community a service by selling the land, but after hearing the proposal: "I think there's a lot better use for it."