Editorial: City creates condo nightmare

Sunday, Dec. 11, 2005 | 8:25 a.m.

Three Las Vegas residents are claiming in a lawsuit that the city is trying to muscle them out of their homes as a way of increasing the value of a commercial site it bought nearly four years ago. The attorney for the three says the city's actions amount to intimidation.

The residents each own a Decatur Gardens condo at Decatur Boulevard and Vegas Drive. All of the condo buildings at Decatur Gardens have been purchased by the city and demolished over the past couple of years except the three still occupied. In the lawsuit, the residents say the city has turned their lives into hell as a way of forcing them to sell out.

For example, the suit says, the city chose patios adjoining the three occupied units as the place to dump debris -- including dirty toilets -- from the gutted condos. Street lights, alarms and sprinkler systems have been removed. The suit also accuses the city of tampering with services such as garbage pickup, water, power, sewer and telephone. Blockades have been erected that make it difficult for the three owners to enter or leave their homes. The Decatur Gardens swimming pool was drained and filled with dirt.

The lawsuit contends that such actions were undertaken to "attempt to force the remaining landowners to sell their property to the city for less than ... fair market value." One of the owners told Las Vegas Sun reporter Ed Koch that he had been offered $47,000, which he says is only half what it would cost to buy an equivalent condo.

All of this began about six years ago when then-City Councilman Michael McDonald urged the city to buy the decaying Wonderworld shopping center, in front of Decatur Gardens. The city did so but claimed it could not attract a developer because the aging Decatur Gardens was an eyesore. So in 2002 the city began buying out the Decatur Gardens residents. McDonald is now interested in acquiring the former Wonderworld site, along with Decatur Gardens, and building senior housing there.

Purchase of the condos may have been justified as an improvement project. But the city should have waited until it had willing agreements with all of the owners. Or it could have bought the condos individually and properly maintained them until it owned the whole complex. Instead, it demolished the condos it had purchased and turned the complex into a nightmarish slum for the holdouts. This is an outrageous way for the government to be doing business.