High-rise project OK’d

Friday, Aug. 6, 2004 | 11:10 a.m.

A proposal to build two high-rise towers on the west side of the Las Vegas Valley received the approval of the Clark County Planning Commission late Thursday night.

The Planning Commission voted 5-0, with one abstention, to approve the towers planned for Durango Drive and the Las Vegas Beltway at a height of 270 feet -- 30 feet lower than originally proposed.

Opponents of the project, who said the towers were too high and blocked views of the mountains, promised to strengthen their resistance before the issue goes to the full Clark County Commission next month.

But members of the Planning Commission embraced the two tall towers.

"It's just too bad that you don't approach these things so you can keep out of the way of the tree-huggers," said Planning Commission member Kirby Trumbo. "It's well thought out and it's a good place for it."

He said that four decades ago, people thought the hills to the west of the urban area were considered ugly, "and if you're driving 85 (mph), who cares?"

"The whole idea about saving the views from the highway, unless you're going to pull off somewhere, I don't know. I just don't get it."

High-rise towers have become the latest battle in the debate of the valley's growth.

Residents protested a proposed 300-foot casino tower near Red Rock earlier this year. After a public fight and a series of negotiations, the tower was eventually approved at 200 feet.

The commission on Wednesday approved five high-rise tower projects on or near the Strip and the Las Vegas City Council approved another project this week.

But the plan before the county Planning Commission on Wednesday was among the few outside the current urban area.

Lisa Mayo-DeRiso, a board member of Scenic Nevada and a veteran of the fight against the Red Rock Station height, said the planned towers in the southwest part of the valley are inappropriate.

"The buildings at 300 feet and now at 270 feet are too intense for this area," she said. Mayo-DeRiso said views of the Spring Mountains and the valley would be blocked for travelers on the beltway.

"When you come around the Durango curve, you come around that curve and see the complete vista of the valley," she said. "Three hundred feet in that area will absolutely block that entire view in that area."

Representatives for the developer, a consortium dubbed Paramount Professional Plaza, said lowering the heights of the towers lower would threaten the viability of their planned mix of retail, commercial and residential uses called "urban village" in the language of county planning staff.

"This is a classic U-V, mixed use development," attorney Chris Kaempfer told the Planning Commission. "The site is located adjacent to the beltway in the middle of some very intense development."

Kaempfer said the developers could knock off several floors of the condominium complex to go to 270 feet, but taking more off the top would mean a thorough redesign of the project.

Land-use consultant Greg Borgel told the board that not only is the site in a "node of quite intense development," but the location is in a low point of the valley, so is not likely to significantly affect people's views. He said it was unfair to compare the towers to the hotly contested issue settled earlier this year over the height of Station Casinos' Red Rock Station, a casino originally planned at 300 feet which finally was approved below 200 feet.

"The top of this building will be lower than the bottom of Red Rock Station," he said, because of the lower elevation. "This is a low point in the valley."

Mayo-DeRiso said a primary concern, though, is not just the impact the towers will have on the view, but on the projects that would come later.

"If we allow 300 feet and set a precedent, you're going to see more and more of these," she said. "It's very hard to say no once you have established a precedent."

Mayo-DeRiso, who read a letter from the local Sierra Club, which cited similar reasons for opposing the project, asked the Planning Commission to delay action on the tower request until the county comes to grips with the flood of requests for high rises.

Wednesday, the county commission approved requests for five high rises, all along the Strip. However, several commissioners, including Commissioner Lynette Boggs McDonald, who represents both the proposed site for the towers and the west side of the Strip, said the issue needs to be studied in more detail and land-use rules drafted to set appropriate heights for different areas of the county.

Boggs McDonald has indicated she will not support the 300-foot height at the site.

Chris Peitsch, a Rhodes Ranch resident attending the Planning Commission, agreed.

"When I think about 300-foot towers, I think about the Strip," Peitsch said. "That is where they belong. This is just too intense for our area."

Borgel suggested that the high rises should not be restricted to the Strip.

"Not everyone who wants to live in a relatively high-rise development wants to live on the Strip," he said.

Borgel said the mixed-use development would contribute to a growing concentration of homes and businesses in the area, already jump-started by the 130-foot Southern Hills Hospital next door.

"We're looking at a miniature little downtown area in the west," he said.

Commission member Will Watson called the towers, which would be home to about 500 luxury condominium units, a sensible reaction to escalating land prices.

Borgel also noted that towers are far more water efficient than single family homes. Nearly all the water used indoors is recycled, which the amount of water-consuming landscaping is relatively limited.

While the Planning Commission liked the proposal, it also has a strike against it. The Spring Valley Town Advisory Board voted 3-0 last week to recommend denial of the land-use permit needed for the building heights.

The County Commission will have the final say on the request. The commission is scheduled to hear the debate on the issue Sept. 8.