Tuesday, Jan. 20, 2004 | 11:26 a.m.
The rural hamlet of Indian Springs has gone through booms and busts over the last 150 years or so, sometimes literally: It was once home to hundreds of workers employed at the Nevada Test Site for above-ground atomic bomb tests.
Later Indian Springs housed many of the Air Force personnel and their families working at the base on the other side of the highway. But when, in the 1980s and early 1990s, the Air Force moved residential housing out of the northwest corner of Clark County, centralizing those services at Nellis Air Force Base, much of the population left with it.
Now there are signs that Indian Springs is growing again, and Clark County is working to guide that growth in a way that makes sense to the residents, the Air Force and everyone else with a stake in the development of what now is little more than a slow patch on U.S. 95. The Clark County Commission, which has the ultimate say over land-use decisions in the community with advice from the town advisory board, is scheduled to receive a broad "vision statement" of the community today.
In the future, zoning guides could take into account both the historical planning and future needs of the community based in part on the vision statement.
The needs are expected to grow with the population in Indian Springs, experts say. According to Cherie Garrity in the Clark County Comprehensive Planning Department, the town's population grew from 1,302 on July 1, 2000 to 1,640 three years later, a 26 percent increase. That substantially outpaced Clark County's own phenomenal growth rate of 15 percent during the same period.
The numbers cited by Garrity do not include an even larger increase in the population of prisoners at the High Desert State Prison and Southern Desert Correctional Center, which went from 1,324 inmates to 2,104.
The expansion of the prison, however, has added population to Indian Springs because families have moved to the town to be closer to inmates, according to Indian Springs Town Advisory Board Chairman Mike Bingham.
Bingham says he hasn't really noticed the population increase in his community, but what has changed is the type of family living there.
A decade ago, the military moved its personnel out of Indian Springs, although a few older homeowners remain from that period and even farther back, to the A-bomb era, he said.
When the military population moved out, "all of those trailer spaces became vacant and a lot of prison personnel moved in," he said. "Then a lot of families to the prisoners moved in."
The military is pouring money back into the Air Force installation, but that isn't bringing back families, Bingham said.
"It's in full swing, but they plan to bus everybody out" from Las Vegas, about an hour south on U.S. 95, he said.
What Bingham and many of his neighbors, most of whom live in mobile homes or prefabricated and assembled manufactured housing, want to see is a change in the demographic of those moving to his community.
They hope to bring in middle-class families. Bingham, who lives in one of a handful of traditional "stick built" homes in the community, said he doesn't have anything against mobile homes, but he does not want more of the crowded trailer parks that form the heart of Indian Springs.
Instead of 10 trailers to an acre, he would like homes on half-acre lots.
"We want to grow, but we want to grow right," Bingham said. "We don't want high-density."
The town board recently recommended denying a proposal to put 230 manufactured homes on 31 acres just across the road from Bingham. The Clark County Commission, the ultimate authority on zoning issues affecting Indian Springs, is scheduled to have the final word on the issue Feb. 4.
The town board, county staffers, Air Force planners and others are collaborating on a guide to the future of the community.
The visioning statement scheduled to go to the county commission today, Comprehensive Planning Manager Irene Navis pointed out, is very broad. It notes that the town is "a clean, safe, healthy and sustainable environment for residents of all ages," that it has a "unique rural character," and provides a "diverse, viable attractive alternative to the urban lifestyle."
These are elements that the residents of Indian Springs want to keep. The hard part, Bingham and others agree, is to keep those elements while continuing to grow.
Dodie Patrick, the town librarian and a member of the town board, said, "People like it here because we're still kind of small. I can sit on my porch at night and watch the stars."
But county planners expect more growth in the town, and the boom could be explosive under several scenarios.
The town has about 200 acres to build on now, and the Bureau of Land Management could open up more property for development if the federal policymakers so directed, Gene Pasinsky, a Clark County planner, said.
"It's got a lot of opportunity," he said.
Down the road, the Air Force continues to expand its successful Predator, unmanned aircraft program, and its security-service training.
An even bigger impact could be if Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository receives a final federal go-ahead. County and state leaders vehemently oppose the dump, which the Energy Department hopes to open in 2010. The waste site would be just a half-hour up the highway.
"All of the sudden nuclear waste is coming. Where would people stay?" Pasinsky asked. "Indian Springs."
Even without Yucca Mountain, the town could see growth. One factor that could attract people is the affordability of the housing. Bingham said homes can be found beginning at $60,000, and prices top out at around $200,000 -- a bargain compared with Las Vegas' rapidly escalating housing prices.
Already, new home construction is creeping steadily north along U.S. 95. Once an hour's drive away, grocery stores serving the urban population are a 24-mile commute for Indian Springs residents.
While the Air Force personnel commute to the Indian Springs Auxiliary Air Field, the military is committed to spending $130 million to $150 million in infrastructure improvements at the base, according to field commander Lt. Col. Scott Sturgill. Already, about 100 civilian contractors call Indian Springs home.
More could come.
The Air Force and members of the town have what both sides call a good relationship. The relationship is important to the planning process because the Air Force wants to keep homes out of areas where aircraft create noise or the potential for accidents.
Col. Kurtis Lohide, vice commander of the 99th Air Base Wing, takes an active interest in zoning in the town. He wants to keep residents and his aircraft as far apart as practical.
As part of redefining the future of Indian Springs, Lohide said the Air Force is recommending incorporation of areas where residential development would be restricted. But Lohide and Sturgill said their interest does not mean that development will not happen.
"We have to grow together," Sturgill said. "It's a mutual relationship ... It's something we work at. We work well with the folks here and we plan to continue that relationship."
The Air Force provides full-time fire and medical emergency support to the volunteer fire station in Indian Springs, he noted.
Bingham said most people in the town are generally happy with their military neighbors. People don't even mind the roar of the high-performance jet Thunderbirds practicing overhead, he said.
Bingham said he moved to the town a decade ago to get away from the gritty urban reality of Las Vegas. In Indian Springs, he, his dogs and horses aren't threatened. He hears the stories of people who built ranches in the desert outside of Las Vegas, only to have urban subdivisions swallow their homes a few years later.
"I thought I would be far enough out here that I didn't have to worry about that," he said. Bingham believes that's still possible.
"Why can't we protect what we have and still have growth?" he asked.
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