Storming the gates

By Buck Wargo

Sunday, April 2, 2006 | 7:21 a.m.

There's no doubt which side poet Robert Frost would come down on in a growing debate over gated communities and walled subdivisions in the Las Vegas Valley.

In his well-known poem "Mending Wall," Frost wrote: "Something there is that does not love a wall, that wants it down ... Before I built a wall I'd ask to know what I was walling in or walling out."

That question is one that local officials increasingly are asking themselves. And like the narrator in Frost's poem, many have no great love for the walls and gates that divide many valley communities, separating neighbor from neighbor.

Yearning for greater "openness" and "connectivity" among pedestrian-friendly neighborhoods, valley cities are lining up behind policies aimed at limiting or even banning the gated communities and enclosed residential enclaves that dot many local neighborhoods.

Last month, Boulder City enacted a six-month moratorium on gated communities to give the City Council time to enact an ordinance outlawing them.

In January, the Las Vegas City Council approved a new zoning designation that enables developers to build walkable village-like developments that link neighborhoods.

Similarly, Henderson officials, looking to foster social interaction and lessen dependence on cars, in February updated that city's comprehensive plan to encourage developers to build walkable, connected communities - compact, Rockwellesque neighborhoods in which parks, shops, restaurants, workplaces and other amenities are close to homes, a planning style known as "New Urbanism."

And North Las Vegas also is updating its comprehensive plan, with gated and walled communities expected to be a major part of the discussion.

Those legislative forays in local city halls put valley cities on the front lines of a simmering philosophical debate over how gated developments affect the fabric of society - how a gate that promises safety and cohesiveness to those inside sends an unwelcome message of distrust to those outside, how fortress-like walls and other design features can shape how neighbors interact with, or keep their distance from, each other.

In short, are gates and walls a step toward - or a formidable barrier to - the rather intangible quality of neighborliness and what some researchers call America's "social capital"?

Passionate advocates can be found on both sides of the question. Indeed, while some would agree with a line in Frost's poem that holds that "good fences make good neighbors," others believe that such barriers have precisely the opposite effect.

What's happening in Las Vegas is "part of a growing national trend," said Steve Filmanowicz, a spokesman for the Congress For New Urbanism in Chicago.

"There are a lot of places in the country that you see a lot of gated communities, but the pendulum is starting to swing the other way," Filmanowicz said.

Last spring in greater Los Angeles, where there are more than 1 million homes behind gates, opponents of gated communities placed bright orange viewing platforms in front of three gated neighborhoods to draw attention to the issue.

"People realize when you have a well-connected community, it creates a more vibrant city. The concept of walking down the street to the coffee shop, church or hardware store would be impossible if you have gates," Filmanowicz said.

Clark County was ahead of the curve when, in July 2000, it updated its codes to require that homes be built facing major streets as much as possible. That planning guideline makes it more difficult to build a gated community because no homeowner would want a front-porch view of a wall, said Planning Manager Chuck Pulsipher.

Despite the various moves by local governments, nobody is writing the obituary for gated communities in the Las Vegas Valley.

Gated neighborhoods remain popular with many home buyers, and some gated communities have opened recently, such as The Club at Madeira Canyon in Henderson.

"I think different buyers have different expectations and needs, and there is certainly a place for more open communities in Las Vegas that hasn't existed in the past," said Nick Parks, the marketing director of Pulte Homes and Del Webb.

"So while we are hearing about New Urbanism and gateless communities because it is a new phenomenon, I still think buyers who want gates appreciate the enclosed communities. Gates can communicate prestige and added security."

Boulder City officials, however, have a markedly different opinion of gates and are moving to ban them, following inquiries from an existing subdivision and an RV park with private streets about installing gates. The city has no gated communities.

"I don't think we should have gated communities, and the primary reason is that without them you have more of a community that is involved and stays involved," said Boulder City Mayor Robert Ferraro.

Residents of Boulder City's Red Mountain RV Resort, though, say a desire for more security - not to be less neighborly - is what prompted them to consider becoming a gated community.

Lance Crowley, president of the RV park's board of directors, said residents of the 275-lot resort believe that gates would help keep out overnight squatters and reduce thefts. Someone recently drove off with a cargo trailer full of tools and furniture, he said.

The Boulder City Planning Commission, though, voted 5-2 in favor of an ordinance banning gates. Not everyone in the city, however, thinks that's a good idea.

"I just think it infringes on personal property rights," said Planning Commissioner John Schleppegrell. "I think people ought to have a right to be able to protect themselves from the criminal element in our society."

A developer who has built gated communities, however, says the feeling of added security afforded by gates and walls is more perception than reality.

John Ritter, the chief executive of Focus Property Group, whose 2,000-acre Inspirada development in Henderson is the valley's first foray into New Urbanism, said getting to know your neighbors offers the best safety.

"There is no evidence to suggest that gated communities are more safer," Ritter said.

"I am a lot safer if my neighbors know I am going out of town and they see a strange car pull up to the house. There was a time when you didn't have walls and you knew everyone else.

"We created this situation where we lived in walled subdivisions, our own back yards are walled and the primary feature on our house is the garage. We open it, pull into the garage and shut it and go into the house. We don't have a chance to have social interaction and get to know the neighbors."

At the gated Siena golf course community in Summerlin, home to those 55 and older, a resident walking to his mailbox last August was robbed at gunpoint. Police said the robber entered the development by following a resident through an unguarded mechanical gate.

Even so, Siena resident Matthew Horween still believes that living in a gated community is safer. With the amount of vandalism, burglaries and shootings in Las Vegas, he said, the walls and gates offer protection.

"The theory is that if you make it difficult, the criminals will go someplace else," he said.

MacDonald Highlands developer Rich MacDonald, who lives in his gated community in Henderson, also is convinced that guarded restricted-access communities are much safer. Residents feel the same and are willing to pay a premium for it, he said.

"Most people want security," MacDonald said. "This idea of not having walls to get from this place to that place, it sounds good and has a nice little planning buzz, but I don't buy it. It would be nice not to have walls or security or police, but human nature is human nature. There seems to be more crime now than in the past."

But not everyone who has lived in a gated community is a fan of the concept.

Sun City Anthem resident Favil West, who lived in a gated community in Oklahoma, said he never felt that it offered him more protection than ungated areas.

Gates have drawbacks, he said, noting that unless he made arrangements for friends' entry, gates made it difficult for them to stop by. West also felt that the gates undermined a sense of community.

"When I first came here, I thought I would like to have a gate, but this is a very safe community (and) I don't believe we need one," West said. "If I was younger with kids, maybe it would be a different proposition."

The future of gated communities in the Las Vegas Valley ultimately may be shaped as much, if not more, by economics - in particular, high land prices - as by shifting attitudes within government chambers.

Ryan Soucie, the director of sales of Rhodes Homes, which recently opened the 2,000-home gated community Tuscany Village near Lake Las Vegas, pointed out that gated developments typically have golf courses and other features such as community pools and clubhouses. The rising cost of land and water, he said, makes it difficult for such projects to pencil out.

Ritter believes that while gated communities are far from becoming a "thing of the past" in the Las Vegas area, there will be fewer of them in the future. That is also true of the blocks-long walls that some developers have used to define a subdivision, he said.

With higher land prices requiring higher densities, walled communities can make homeowners feel hemmed in and claustrophobic, said Ritter, whose Inspirada development will house about 11,500 residents on roughly 2,000 acres.

The development's dense mixed-use, pedestrian-friendly neighborhoods with no gated communities and few walls will be interconnected by narrow streets, village squares, parks and open space. The design, he said, will encourage residents to walk to the store, to the park and even to work.

Boulder City's move to ban gated communities is of note because New Urbanism developments are trying to mimic what the city already offers, Ritter said.

"Boulder City has that small-town neighborly feel to it, and I think these new projects are going to have that," Ritter said. "People are starved for a sense of community, especially in Las Vegas."

North Las Vegas City Manager Gregory Rose said his city appears to have fewer gated communities than its neighbors, reflecting a desire for open streets and public rights-of-way.

Although gated communities are included in the Aliante master planned community, Rose expects the higher housing densities on the horizon to preclude many such developments in the future.

North Las Vegas Councilman Robert Eliason says the city should allow the marketplace to dictate what is built. But he wants the city's updated master plan to at least encourage more wrought-iron fences, trees, hedges and other landscaping over block walls.

"It appears to be a lot more friendlier," Eliason said.

Pulsipher said focus groups urged the same approach six years ago when the county changed its development code, making it more difficult to build gated communities and even to surround ungated communities with walls. At the time, many residents said they did not want the canyon-effect that lengthy walls created along streets.

In Henderson, Councilwoman Amanda Cyphers said just as gated communities are an obstacle for those traveling by car or on foot, walls in ungated neighborhoods have the same effect. In her old east Henderson neighborhood, block walls prevented her from walking a short distance to the store, she said.

"You couldn't walk to where you wanted to go but had to go around it," Cyphers said in supporting the city's push for fewer gates and walls. "It is not that we are an anti-gate community now - we simply want to provide all types of living styles for people."

That was the intent when Las Vegas adopted a new zoning code in January to allow New Urbanism development that otherwise could not have been built under the city's previous codes, said Planning Manager Tom Perrigo.

Walkability and connection are the themes behind the Kyle Canyon Gateway development in the northwest corner of Las Vegas that will have about 15,000 homes on 1,700 acres.

"The incentive provides more flexibility to developers to build the kind of communities the council envisions," Perrigo said.

"That's a connectivity and walkability and a mixture of housing and de-emphasis on walls and gates. Some people will like it and some won't. But I think when those projects come online, there will be more demand for it."