Friday, Dec. 9, 2005 | 7:23 a.m.
A lawsuit that Ted Morrison and two other owners of condominiums near Decatur Boulevard and Vegas Drive filed in District Court reads like something out of an episode of "The Sopranos."
But it is not the mob that over the last three years has leaned on Morrison and others to sell 16 units at the Decatur Gardens condos and 64 units at the neighboring Shalimar Gardens at Elmhurst and Westmoreland drives. It is Las Vegas that has done the strong-arming, the three holdouts contend.
In their lawsuit, they allege that the city -- eager to clear a downscale site for senior housing -- used unusually aggressive buyout tactics, including draining the Decatur Gardens swimming pool and filling it with dirt.
"It is frightening that the city can do this to private homeowners," said attorney Autumn Waters, who along with her father, attorney Kermitt Waters, is representing the three remaining holdouts.
"You would expect Tony Soprano to dump a truckload of dirt into your swimming pool if you refused to sell him your home. You wouldn't expect something like that from the city."
Other actions by the city and other defendants to force condo owners to sell, according to the lawsuit, include:
The lawsuit, for which no court date has been set, describes such actions as an "attempt to force the remaining landowners to sell their property to the city for less than ... fair market value."
Morrison contends that the pressure on the remaining homeowners began early in 2003 after the city had acquired about half of the condos.
The remaining tenants say that they called the police when the city filled in the pool and took some of the other steps that made life miserable for them.
But because it was the city taking the action, they say law enforcement ignored their pleas. Uniformed city marshals even stood guard as the pool was filled with dirt, Morrison said.
Condo owners were told the city filled in the pool for liability reasons. Because the city owned the majority of the units, it would have taken the brunt of a lawsuit if someone drowned or was injured in the pool.
Morrison, though, said the fenced-in pool was up to code and that was no excuse to deprive the remaining condo owners of its use.
Today, Morrison tries to live as normal a life as possible. His apartment is adorned with Christmas decorations, including a big lighted tree and a large mechanical Santa to greet visitors.
Such cheery seasonal visions inside his ground-floor unit are in stark contrast to the bleak view outside: three boarded-up condos around his home and barbed-wire-topped fencing surrounding the building.
"I've had to climb over barriers to get to my car, and vagrants have broken into the boarded-up units above me and set fires to keep warm," said Morrison, a 61-year-old retired truck driver. "The smell from the debris that the city piled up was sickening. It was just not right what the city did to us.
"I've had bleeding ulcers over this."
The $47,000 that the city offered Morrison for the home he has lived in for 20 years was an offer he said he could refuse because it was not enough to purchase a home comparable to his two-bedroom, two-bathroom condo.
A random check of Decatur and Shalimar Gardens condo sales approved by the City Council showed the buyouts ranging from $40,000 to $60,000. Based on condo prices in the area, it would cost him nearly twice what the city has offered to replace his current home, Morrison says.
Many other tenants who faced the same dilemma, however, opted to accept the city's offer and move.
When the city started pressuring the homeowners, Autumn Waters said, "many of the residents, including a number of seniors, decided they did not want to spend their last days fighting this and instead took the offers."
But Morrison, who several years ago paid off his mortgage and does not have the income to qualify for a major new mortgage loan, chose to fight.
"I realize it is difficult to fight City Hall, but I'm not going to let them just run over me, take my property and terrorize me," Morrison said. "I'm fighting for what's fair."
His lawsuit seeks damages in excess of $10,000. While juries in Nevada can give multimillion-dollar awards, lawyers cannot ask for outrageously high figures in their lawsuits to drum up pretrial publicity.
Las Vegas, which has demolished all of the condo buildings except for the three occupied by the holdouts, decided in 2002 to acquire the aging residential units because the city was having difficulty getting anyone interested in developing the nearby Wonderworld shopping center at Decatur and Vegas Drive. The condos are directly behind the now-closed shopping center.
The city had bought the decaying commercial property at the urging of then-City Councilman Michael McDonald, who grew up in the neighborhood and believed it was a viable investment. However, the city's requests for proposals drew no acceptable offers.
Eighteen months after McDonald left office in June 2003, he returned to City Hall with a concept to build a senior center and low-rent senior housing on the site of the commercial and condo properties.
In February, McDonald was granted an exclusive negotiating agreement from the Las Vegas City Council to purchase for $8 million the Wonderworld site -- a 13.4-acre tract appraised at about $6 million. McDonald's purchase price will cover not only the $6 million land cost, but also compensate the city for the money it has spent to date acquiring the condos and on cleanup work on the site.
Since receiving exclusive negotiating rights, McDonald has been granted two 90-day extensions from the City Council to buy the property, the latest in September.
Named as a defendant in the lawsuit, McDonald declined to comment on it.
He has told the City Council that his project would go forward with or without purchase of all of the residential units.
Waters said the city's actions were "worse than the threat of eminent domain," a practice Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman has vowed the city will not use to acquire private homes to give to developers of private projects.
Asked if he also opposes the city using methods to get around eminent domain, Goodman said: "That would be more reprehensible than using eminent domain."
"If it (the condo owners' claims) is true, it's shameful," said Goodman, who is not specifically named in the lawsuit.
Other city staffers declined to comment because the matter is in litigation. The city, however, issued a written statement this week, saying it was trying to improve an area that had become "a general blight."
"It appeared that the blighted four-plexes behind the Wonderworld site were a detriment to ... proposed development, and the city began to assemble as many of these parcels as it could," the city said in the court-filed document. "All of the purchases by the city have been through willing seller/willing buyer acquisitions."
In its two-page response to the lawsuit, the city, without going into specifics, also issues a blanket denial of the various allegations detailed in the lawsuit.
Waters argues that the city's actions were illegal under both state law and the rules of the homeowners association. She contends the city should not have filled in the pool, removed the street lights or done anything else until it legally obtained every unit because her clients still own partial rights to everything on the property.
Ed Koch can be reached at 259- 4090 or at [email protected].
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