Wednesday, Aug. 3, 2005 | 10:53 a.m.
Lee Canyon residents have weathered a year of avalanches, loss of telephone service and the threat of forest fires. Now a Utah company is proposing what for canyon residents may be the worst of of all: a large resort development on the slopes of Mount Charleston.
The chairwoman of the Mount Charleston Town Advisory Board, which provides recommendations on land uses affecting the mountain to the Clark County Commission and planning staff, said the company proposed a development that would include video gaming, a five-story hotel or lodge, nightclub, restaurant and cabins near the intersection of State Route 156 and Deer Creek Highway.
The resort would include 100 hotel or condominium units, according to the proposal discussed at a recent town board meeting.
Becky Grismanauskas, town board chairwoman, said the reaction of community members has been swift and negative. Grismanauskas lives on the Kyle Canyon side of Mount Charleston, where most of the mountain's 300 or so full-time residents live, and which already has a hotel, lodge, a handful of rental cabins and several restaurants.
Lee Canyon has about 70 residents, according to neighbors, and is home to Southern Nevada's only ski resort.
"There are a lot of issues with this -- public safety, public services in general," Grismanauskas said. "The only rescue service we've got on the entire mountain is located in Kyle Canyon and is manned by the volunteer fire department. There's a lot of things that we have to think about and weigh if this development were to occur, not to mention the fact that there is no electricity in Lee Canyon.
"This entire project would have to run on generators, with diesel fuel trucked up. The winter conditions up here, a lot of the time regular four-wheel drives with snow tires can't get through.
"All the residents are concerned, not just in Lee Canyon, but in Kyle Canyon too. I asked Metro (Police), the highway patrol, all of the fire agencies, all of the emergency services and public services what they would do. They are all in the same quandary. They are asking the same questions."
The Jack Johnson Co. of Park City, Utah, has designed and built golfing and ski resorts across the country and especially in the West.
Company representatives did not return repeated phone calls. The 29-acre property is now owned by Lee Canyon Enterprises, a Las Vegas company whose principals could not be reached by telephone.
The land is surrounded mostly by U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management property.
Those who need phones in Lee Canyon have been relying on satellite service since a series of avalanches in January knocked out the tiny community's single ground line to the outside world. One of the avalanches that came with last winter's heavy snows on Mount Charleston killed a teenager using a ski lift at the Las Vegas Ski and Snowboard Resort at the top of Lee Canyon.
The ski resort, which repaired the damage caused to its infrastructure by the avalanche and was back in service later in the winter, is one of several ski resorts owned by Powdr Corp., another Park City, Utah, company.
Despite the proximity of the company headquarters, there is no relationship between the companies, said Powdr Corp. Executive Vice President Rick Desvaux.
Desvaux said Jack Johnson has a reputation for building quality resorts, but Powdr Corp. has no knowledge about the proposed Lee Canyon effort and thus, could not comment.
Any development on Lee Canyon has more than bad weather, a lack of services and angry neighbors to contend with. Clark County zoning and the master land-use plan for the area would not allow a large development, said Chuck Pulsipher, Clark County planning manager.
A proposal for a full-fledged casino could not even be entertained under existing county rules, he said.
"I can't even take an application for a resort-hotel north of Deer Creek Highway," he said.
However, the developers could make an effort to build a simple hotel at the site. The proposal would have to go through the process for land-use requests that do not conform to the existing zoning or underlying long-range plans for the area, Pulsipher said.
He said despite the presentation to the Mount Charleston Town Advisory Board, nobody has applied for any formal zone changes at the site, which would be necessary before any commercial construction could go forward.
Some residents said they would try to block any such proposal.
"I don't like it, and neither do 99 percent of the people up here," said Jean Perry-Jones, a 30-year resident on Mount Charleston, a teacher and Realtor and former chairman of the Mount Charleston Town Advisory Board. "It's not compatible with the mountain development and why people come up here. It would totally violate our land-use plan.
"There's no commercial growth allowed above the Deer Creek Highway, and that's north of Deer Creek.
"It's not conforming to the rural character, there are water issues, and there are health and safety issues. It is in a box canyon and the nearest emergency responders are 45 minutes away."
Perry-Jones said trips from the Kyle Canyon side of the mountain to Lee Canyon usually take at least a half hour, and frequently more. Kyle Canyon is an about an hour's drive north of Las Vegas, although in the winter it frequently takes much longer.
"It's ridiculous," said Stephanie Myers, a Lee Canyon resident and advisor on trial juries. "Lee Canyon does not need to be another Park City.
"It's possible that they're putting all kinds of stuff they want in there and they might have done that so they can just pull some of it off, when really all they want is a hotel," she said. "We won't know for sure until they make their formal application sometime this month."
Approval from the county would compromise the "health and safety and general welfare of the populace," Myers said.
Myers said water also could be a stumbling block for the proposal.
Susan Potts, Southern Nevada conservation director for Friends of Nevada Wilderness and a friend of Myers, lives near the village of Blue Diamond, miles from Lee Canyon, but shares the concerns about the impact of a hotel or resort in the area.
The environment in the area would be affected, Potts said.
"A development of that size is likely to impact wilderness, if only because of the increased number of visitors to the area," Potts said. "I would want to look closely at where it was in relation to the wilderness areas.
"That area is growing so rapidly that it's impacting the reasons people want to live up there. The mountain is just in danger of being loved to death by too many people. We have to first and foremost protect the natural resources up there, and recreation should come second."
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