Tuesday, March 1, 2005 | 11:03 a.m.
Residents of a mobile home park just off Las Vegas Boulevard have followed the stories focusing on land trades between the Clark County Aviation Department and local developers with more than just passing interest.
The Cactus Ridge residents, retirees who mostly live on fixed incomes, say they are being victimized by a similar land swap that has not received the same kind of scrutiny. Although most of the land swaps between the airport and developers have generated millions in profit for the private interests, their story is very different: It is about people who fear that they will lose their homes.
The residents own the 193 manufactured homes and trailers in a clean, neat community with park benches, landscaping, a community center and pool. Just a stone's throw from Las Vegas Boulevard South, this community just south of Serene Avenue is far from the dilapidated trailer parks in other parts of Las Vegas.
Real estate developer Howard Bulloch owns the land underneath the homes, and he is proud of the condition of the streets and landscaping. Bulloch acquired the land, along with an office park and vacant property next to the mobile home park -- land slated for condos -- in 2003 as part of a contested land swap with the airport.
Bulloch is a well-known businessman, but an unlikely one to be running a mobile home park. Airport officials said in 2003 that they included the park as part of the larger swap so they could get out of running the site.
They took on that job five years earlier. The airport literally moved the residents into Cactus Ridge when it purchased Las Vegas Mobile Home Park and Treasure Lodge, two mobile home communities along Tropicana Avenue, through its right of eminent domain.
Unlike other deals involving the airport, this did not involve "willing buyer, willing seller."
The reasoning for the purchase, explained Aviation Department Director Randy Walker, was that the land was in the flight path of the airport, although not in the area covered by the county's agreement with the federal government to restrict residential development.
State law required the county, as the new owners of the two old mobile home parks, to relocate the residents if the old sites were closed. The residents did not generally oppose the move, reasoning that with Clark County as the landlord, their homes would be safe and their rents would be stable.
"They were promised they would have a place to live for the rest of their lives in affordable housing," said Anni Vilches, president of the Cactus Ridge Homeowners Association.
With the 2003 sale to Bulloch and partner David Gaffin, the impact was almost immediate, residents say, but most of the bite has come with increases for the rent and other charges since November.
"The understanding was when I moved here that it was never going to be sold or anything," said Nicholas Rippe, a retired shuttle bus driver for the Rio. Rippe lives in his mobile home with his wife, Valerie.
"When the airport had it, the monthly rent was only $395 a month," said Rippe, whose rent is now $520. "The rent went up $125 in three months. They can raise it anytime they want and there's no restrictions on it."
Rippe and his neighbors believe the goal of the new owners is to drive them out of the park so that the developers can build something with better cash return, like many of the big projects nearby.
They note that leases in place prevent big rent increases -- but the management company for the owners is not renewing long-term leases, instead renewing them on a month-to-month basis and exposing residents to potentially regular rent hikes.
Bulloch, however, said he is not interested in forcing people out. Much of the increase cited by Rippe and others is due to his charging the residents for property tax and property insurance, two costs that the county did not pay.
The leases include a provision that allows for such charges to be passed along to the residents, Bulloch said.
"I assumed the leases," he said. "I didn't write one lease ... The county wrote the leases long before I arrived on the scene."
The budget for the mobile home park was losing money before instituting the new charges, Bulloch said. He added that the developers waited months before instituting the new charges.
"We didn't do it immediately," he said. "We've tried to be very cordial owners of this park. We've tried to be very cooperative."
Bulloch referred to a year-old survey of other mobile home parks which shows rents ranging from $445 to more than $600.
One thing both the residents and Bulloch agree on: the long-term leases end in 2009. After that, Bulloch has the legal right to close the park, although his long-term plans are not yet set.
If he closes the park, he will have to, by law, move the residents.
Bulloch said the 2003 trade, which only Clark County Commissioner Yvonne Atkinson Gates voted against, made sense for everyone. He and his partners needed "income producing" properties. The airport did not want to be in the mobile home business.
The airport, he said, initiated the trade, which gave the airport more than 19 acres at Warm Springs Road and Las Vegas Boulevard, near the site of the airport's new $150 million consolidated car rental facility, due to open in early 2006.
Bulloch said he would have made more money if he had held onto the 19 acres. He said the airport could receive more than 2 1/2 times the $16.5 million value placed on it by independent appraisers when the deal was done in 2003.
The car rental facility proposal came forward after the trade was consummated, he said, and has had the effect of pushing the property values for the land he surrendered.
"I wish we still had it," Bulloch said. "Randy Walker is one smart man."
While the deal might have been good for the airport, the swap sparked criticism almost immediately. Laura FitzSimmons, an attorney who has often been sharply critical of the airport's land-use deals, said the swap was a sweetheart deal with Bulloch.
FitzSimmons said at the October 2003 commission meeting that Bulloch's 19 acres were not worth $16.5 million.
"The value simply isn't there," she said then. "Why does the public want to buy a piece of land at enormously inflated values?"
FitzSimmons was then and still is representing Steve Sisolak, a member of the university Board of Regents, in a lawsuit affecting land next door to the former Bulloch property. A District Court judge in March 2003 ordered the county to pay Sisolak $6.5 million, an amount now grown to $16.6 million with fees and interest, for imposing height restrictions on 10 acres on Las Vegas Boulevard South.
The county has appealed the issue and, following arguments earlier this month, the case is being considered by the Nevada Supreme Court.
FitzSimmons said the county government's acquisition of Bulloch's 19 acres would make development of Sisolak's 10 acres more difficult.
Walker noted at the time of the Bulloch deal that the developer was asking for about $20 a square foot for the property. Sisolak had asked the airport to buy his property in order to end the lawsuit.
While the airport continues to deal with legal issues including the Supreme Court case, county auditors are conducting an audit of the land deals inspired by concerns over other land swaps.
Jerry Carroll, Clark County auditor, said the inquiry -- which has pulled in the District Attorney's office and potentially investigators from the Bureau of Land Management -- would not look at the Bulloch-Cactus Ridge issue.
"We got some information on that," Carroll said, "but that's not actually CMA (Cooperative Management Area) land ... Maybe down the road, that might be something we might look at."
The focus of criticism of airport land deals has mostly been in and around the 5,300 acres acquired by the county from the federal government in 2000 to limit residential development near the airport.
However, some of the residents argue that federal laws might have been broken or bent. The 1998 condemnation by the airport and creation of Cactus Ridge park was a deal struck with the federal BLM for affordable housing, not a deal for a Las Vegas developer, said Winnie Williams, a four-year resident of the mobile home park.
Commissioner Bruce Woodbury, who represents the area, said he is sympathetic to the residents' situation, but there is little the county can do.
State law covers manufactured housing, but other than the requirement to be relocated if the park actually closes, the owners have few requirements.
"Staff has concluded there are no violations (of county laws) at this point, and no violations of state law either," he said. "There's not much we can do over the rent increase."
Even if the county was still the landlord, the residents might be seeing rent increases to pay for various needs, Woodbury said.
Sue Allen, president of the South West Action Network, said the situation might not have a legal answer, but it is still a county-created problem.
"You've got a group of seniors who were basically living their lives in what was essentially low-cost housing, and they thought they were set," she said. "Then the county exercises eminent domain, and they move all the residents, and now they don't have any protection.
"That's kind of what stinks, and that's what bothers me about it," Allen said. "These could be my parents, these could be anybody's parents. We could all of us end up on the bottom of the food chain like that."
She said the situation is particularly ironic because the county now is searching for ways to find more affordable housing. Allen is a member of the Clark County Growth Management Task Force, which may recommend to the commission that local government acquire more land and act as a landlord to develop affordable housing.
"Here we've got a group of seniors we're basically kicking out on the street while at the same time we're saying 'Woe is us, we have to do something about affordable housing.' What's wrong with this picture?"
Williams and other residents of the park say they are concerned that they will not have any place to go if rents continue to go up or the park eventually closes. The average age of residents is 70, so many, if not most, could still be residents in four years.
Rippe said moving, for most residents, will be impossible. Relocating a manufactured home or double-wide trailer is expensive, costing $10,000 or more, and there are few places left in the county to take the homes anymore.
"There's no place left to move to," he said.
Rippe noted that in February alone, his rent went up $64 -- and that charge was to his base rent, not a charge associated with property taxes or other fees.
"I used to have $190 left over after paying the monthly rent. I don't have that anymore," he said. "I'm going to have to find another job. I'm 67 years old, I'm not in great shape, but I'm going to have to find another job."
archive
