Monday, March 13, 2006 | 7:16 a.m.
Once, the building was filled with doctors' and dentists' offices.
Today, though, Alpine Court is a haven for the homeless, one in which nearly every inch is covered by broken glass, trash, dozens of shopping carts and the occasional mattress.
Few doors remain. Graffiti covers the walls and many windows are boarded up with plywood. "Enter at your own risk" warnings are scribbled on the walls, and "go back sleeping" is scrawled on the steps of a concrete staircase.
At 4820 Alpine Place, the two-story complex is a stone's throw from the busy intersection of Decatur and Charleston boulevards, and a short walk from Arizona Charlie's. On two sides, the complex brushes against a nice apartment complex, where residents pay up to $1,100 a month for three bedrooms.
In short, the neighborhood offers no hint that it includes what city officials consider the worst property in Las Vegas - one so bad that city officials are pushing to demolish the buildings even though they are structurally sound.
Its dichotomous existence - a sad, rundown building home to even sadder denizens in the midst of generally attractive environs - makes Alpine Court the poster child for Las Vegas' battle against blight.
From the street, Alpine Court does not look so terrible. Some spots are blackened, charred by the frequent fires that the homeless start to keep warm or cook. In December, one of those fires killed a homeless man. And there is litter scattered around the front of the property where another chain link fence went up a few days ago.
But for the most part, the modern-looking circular buildings that make up most of the office complex hide the filth inside.
City code enforcement officials have been dealing with problems at the property for almost four years. Sometimes, the city boarded windows and put up chain link fences at taxpayers' expense to try to keep the condition from worsening.
But a relatively new take on existing city laws has given code enforcement officials more power in dealing with vacant properties. In most cases, the new policy has led to new windows replacing boards or demolition by the property owner - situations where the owners took care of the problems with some prodding by the city.
At Alpine Court, though, the city is not seeing any results. And so code enforcement has put the building on a track to be demolished - the end of the road for cases that resist happier conclusions.
The new Dangerous/Vacant Buildings program came about in September after City Council members asked whether more could be done about vacant properties.
Devin Smith, who oversees code enforcement as manager of the city's Neighborhood Response Division, said after working with the city attorney's office, officials decided that code enforcement officers could take a tougher approach to problem properties than they had previously.
A year ago, the city would typically require only that a property be secured - boarding up windows and sometimes putting a fence around a property, plus having its yard free of trash or overgrown weeds.
But today, the city requires owners of vacant properties to either make their building look inhabited - which means replacing boards with windows and making other fixes - or to tear down their building. And if an owner doesn't work with the city, the city will do the work - and then try to recover the money from the owner.
"Now we say, 'You do something or we'll do something ...,' " Neighborhood Services Director Orlando Sanchez said. "It's better because it has some teeth to it."
City Councilman Lawrence Weekly, whose West Las Vegas constituents live with their share of vacant buildings, said the city's new way of dealing with problem properties is needed - and appears to be working.
"There was a time when if it was boarded up, it was OK," Weekly said. "But then it just gets to a point where all this has to go."
In a typical case, the owner of a targeted property receives 30 days to board up his building, and then gets 60 days to develop a plan to fix up the property within a year.
"Our ultimate goal is to get the property to look like it is lived in," Smith said. "I don't care about the inside, but I want the outside painted, good windows and doors, and it has to be landscaped."
If the property owner does not follow the city's timeline, he is warned with a 10-day notice that the city will have the work done and place a lien on the property for the cost. The owner also could also face daily fines - or, in worst cases, demolition by the city.
But the city is generally flexible and will give property owners extra time if it looks like they are working to improve the situation.
"We just want people to stay on top of their properties," Smith said.
The city has one code enforcement officer, Kelly Oliverius, assigned to the new program. Since September, she has opened cases on 187 properties in every part of the city.
Of those cases, 62 have been closed, which means the buildings have been either demolished, fixed up to the point where they look occupied or have people living in them. The remaining 125 cases are in various stages of the process.
For city officials and neighbors, the efforts seem to be working.
At 1611 Euclid Ave., on the corner of Oakey Boulevard, a tiny house that sat vacant and ignored for years now looks almost new. It is an example, Oliverius said, of how she would like her cases to go.
"It was a piece of junk, a shack that was ugly and had weeds real high," next-door neighbor Buddy Bennett said about the house. "But now it looks real nice."
The house has a new coat of paint, the block wall around it also has been fixed and painted, and the boarded-up windows were replaced with new panes and wooden blinds.
Brian Hoover said soon after he bought the house about six months ago, he got a call from the city.
"They said we needed to fix it up, which we were planning to do anyway," Hoover said.
Although Hoover said the city should remember that not everyone can so quickly fix up their properties, he applauds the city's efforts.
"A vacant, boarded-up house brings down property values," Hoover said. "Before when you drove into this neighborhood, that's what you saw first. But now you see one of the nicest houses on the street."
On Shetland Street, where expensive homes on large lots are the norm, the neighbors also had several problem properties.
Susan Braire said her end of the street was starting to look like a slum.
"For 10 years, we had an eyesore there," she said, referring to a since-demolished building two houses down at 824 Shetland Road. The owner razed the building in January, heading off a city effort to do so.
"In most cases," Oliverius said, "a wake-up call from the city gets people to go ahead and do what they were planning on doing eventually."
But while those are among the cases that have ended up better for the neighborhoods, Alpine Court is the prime example of what no one wants to see, and why the tougher program is needed.
"This is why we go after vacant properties," Oliverius said. "This is the most dangerous building in the city."
Michael Martin, a resident of the Alpine Village Apartments, said it seems like there are fires at Alpine Court all the time, in addition to it being an attractive home for the homeless.
"It's understandable they would go there with it being cold," Martin said, adding that he didn't think the newest fence going up will be any more successful than the previous fences that have gone up around the buildings.
"They'll find a way to get in there."
Martin said he amd his fellow residents believe the only solution to the problem is for someone to "just take the whole thing down."
And at this point, city officials agree.
The city has had buildings demolished in the past, always out of concern that a dilapidated structure could collapse.
But in the case of Alpine Court, the city is looking to tear it down because of what's going on in and around the building, not because of the physical condition of the structure itself.
Randy Tucker, another neighbor of Alpine Court, said that inside the former office complex, "it's really nasty."
"It's been all burned up by the homeless," he said. "And people are going in and out of there doing drugs and lighting candles and falling asleep."
The city's first run-in with Alpine Court came in August 2002, when someone complained about broken windows in the then-partly-vacated building.
Over roughly the next year, the complex, with buildings labeled A through H surrounding a small courtyard, was vacated completely.
In August 2004, the city returned again, ordering more windows boarded and a fence built around the property to keep out vagrants.
That fence was down by January 2005, when new owners - Mogen Holdings, a Beverly Hills, Calif., company, that bought the property for $3 million - put up another fence and promised to start fixing up the building.
Last June, when city inspectors noted the fence was down again and vagrants were using the building, the city ordered Mogen Holdings to clean up and secure the property. When the case advanced to Oliverius in September, there was no fence.
Since then, the city has sent letters to the owners asking for fencing, security and ultimately, demolition. But the building did not improve, and the newest fence went up only last week.
Smith said he might ask the City Council this week for permission to have the city pay for 24-hour security at the property, as he moves toward having the complex torn down.
A demolition contract for Alpine Place could be ready for council approval within a month. If that is approved, the city would give the owners a final 10-day notice.
"Then, on the eleventh day we'll tear it down," Smith said.
"If everything goes right we're 45 days from demolition," he added last Thursday.
As with the earlier costs for fencing and boarding up some windows, Smith said the demolition cost would be added to the city's lien on the property. Because it is a tax lien, if the costs are not paid off within three years, the city could foreclose on the property, Smith said.
Demolition is expected to cost more than $200,000.
Neil Beller, an attorney for Mogen Holdings, said he expects the city will tear down the building.
Beller said he thought his clients had 24-hour security and a fence around the property, though neither was in place until last Thursday. He acknowledged, though, that the building has many "issues."
If City Hall gets its way, one way or another, Alpine Court's neighbors soon will have one less "issue" to deal with in their community.
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