NLV economic boom isn’t universal

Timoth Pratt

Sunday, Nov. 13, 2005 | 9:57 a.m.

On a recent balmy afternoon, James E. Johnson was spreading fertilizer in his front yard as he has every autumn for years.

Johnson has lived on Englestad Street in North Las Vegas since 1970 and has seen the city grow around him -- especially in recent years. To the north, new businesses and houses have sprung up like mushrooms after rain, bringing a wave of economic opportunities to the city.

But at the same time, those dramatic changes on the edges of the city haven't touched his neighborhood much.

The homes in the southern end of the city are about 40 years old, and his neighborhood is part of an area the 2000 Census estimated between 62 percent and 79 percent black -- the highest concentration of blacks in Nevada.

"There's not many people from around here getting jobs," the 69-year-old retired chemical plant worker said in between hellos to every person walking or driving by.

A few miles to the east, a North Las Vegas neighborhood that was home to the highest concentration of Hispanics statewide in the 2000 Census -- 83 percent -- may have higher employment rates, but the jobs tend to be menial, and the housing is run-down, area residents and officials said.

As state Sen. Steven Horsford, D-North Las Vegas, put it, the older, minority-rich parts of North Las Vegas and the "new North Las Vegas" make for "a tale of two cities."

The older parts "are low-income communities that are not enjoying the same level of prosperity" as the newer, booming areas in the north, he said.

In his job as executive director of Nevada Partners, an employment training center about five blocks from Johnson's house, Horsford said he sees many neighborhood residents get trained as cooks, only to find there are no jobs near their homes.

Chester Richardson, vice chairman of the Southern Nevada Workforce Development Board, said there needs to be more communication between agencies such as the board -- which funnels federal money to agencies such as Nevada Partners -- and businesses that are setting up shop in North Las Vegas.

The older neighborhoods have "a large amount of unskilled labor ...(and) new businesses will not be hiring from (there)" -- unless training tailored specifically for those businesses is carried out, Richardson said.

Another side of the coin when it comes to minorities and North Las Vegas can be seen in the newer houses being built to the north.

Horsford and other observers noted that high numbers of minorities -- some of whom left the city's older neighborhoods, or are children of longtime residents -- have moved into upscale housing projects in the north.

Horsford said his in-laws live in Aliante, a master-planned community still under construction north of Centennial Parkway.

"At community events I've been at (there), it's been very diverse," Horsford said.

Andres Ramirez, a political consultant who ran for North Las Vegas mayor in 2005 and lost with 41 percent of the vote, said he also noted the diversity in the northern part of the city when he led a voter registration campaign for a nonprofit group called Voices for Working Families in the 2004 presidential elections.

Of the nearly 2,000 households in the area in and around Aliante who his workers talked to, about 38 percent of them are minorities, he said.

"I was initially shocked at how many ... there were," Ramirez said.

Ramirez lives in the northwest section of the city, in a neighborhood built only four years ago. His immediate neighbors are black, Filipino and Mexican, he said.

His next-door neighbor is Lee Coleman, a 78-year-old black man who has lived in the Las Vegas Valley for 52 years -- including in the area he called "the old west side," which is where Johnson's house is.

Coleman said he quit a maintenance job at the Stardust in 1989 after working there for 32 years. He lived alone, drawing Social Security benefits for several years until, about three years ago, he moved into the quiet, clipped-grass neighborhood of winding streets with his son, his son's wife and their three children.

"I don't know, man, it's just been amazing" to see the growth in North Las Vegas during those decades, he said. "I remember when you came down Cheyenne (Avenue) and there wasn't anything on the other side."

Coleman said he knows people who have moved out of the older neighborhoods and into newer ones, as well as "a lot of folks (who) have been in their houses so long, they like where they live."

About 10 blocks to the south and east, construction is under way on the four corners formed by Centennial and Aliante parkways.

On the southwest corner, a truck with the name of the Mexican state of Nayarit splashed on the side sells burritos and tacos to Mexican workers.

A trio of Garcias -- Uvaldo, Aaron and their uncle German -- were taking a lunch break. They had spent the morning installing plumbing in new houses north of Centennial. They figured that between the three of them they had done plumbing on about 3,000 houses in the valley since 1999.

Still, two of them have yet to buy a house, and German bought his a year only ago. Uvaldo and Aaron live on Civic Center Drive and Cheyenne, a neighborhood they described as "full of cockroaches and mice."

"It would be nice to live here," Uvaldo said. Aaron added, "It's hard building so many nice houses, with marble and Jacuzzis, and you can't live there."

Uvaldo said he would like to be able have his 3-year-old daughter play in a park such as the nearby Nature Discovery Park.

"In our neighborhood, there's too many bad people, too much traffic," he said. The plumber said he hoped to buy a house in a year or two -- "though not over here," he added, motioning to the stucco and tile rising behind him -- not because he would not like to, but because he does not believe he could afford it.

Although an unknown number of minorities have "moved on up," such as Coleman, and others wait their turn, such as the Garcias, Ramirez noted that North Las Vegas is following a pattern seen in other cities where development dollars are poured into the outskirts to the exclusion of the center.

This can't last forever, Ramirez said.

"Eventually, a city acknowledges that it can only build outward so long, and then it comes back inward and redevelops downtown," he said.

Until that happens, he predicted that "the older communities will be ignored."

Maybe not completely, however.

Horsford hopes two bills he worked on in the 2005 Legislature will help strengthen the economic underpinnings of low-income North Las Vegas.

One of the bills seeks to stimulate smaller businesses in the area by offering tax breaks, as well as giving businesses incentives to hire the unemployed.

Another would divvy up $1 million between the Latin Chamber of Commerce and the Urban Chamber of Commerce for grants to minority-owned businesses.

Horsford said any good news that may come from those bills is still months away because regulations tied to the money still haven't been written.

Johnson, in overalls and leaning against an olive tree on his front lawn, offered his own prediction about how things would shake out in his city.

He likes progress, he said -- noting that he wouldn't want to "go back to" the cotton-picking of his Mississippi youth.

Still, he says progress does not mean the same thing for everyone.

"Progress is good for the man with money," he said. "It kills the little man."

Timothy Pratt can be reached at 259-8828 or timothy@lasvegassun.com.

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