NLV apartment plan yanked after neighbors’ protest

Sam Morris

North Las Vegans come together at a May ice cream social to oppose a plan to build apartments nearby. The developer reconsidered in “business decision,” it said.

By Mike Trask (contact)

Friday, May 23, 2008 | 2 a.m.

Sam Morris

Bill and Nola Asher, left, eat ice cream and chat with Rod and Joan Smalls during the social. Residents say the campaign was a bonding experience.

The upside of anger: Neighbors meeting neighbors (5-06-2008)
Neighbors aren’t sharing alarm over casino project (4-28-2008)
Old development deal, new anxiety in NLV (4-09-2008)

North Las Vegas City Council

Two scoops of ice cream and a little indignation brought a group of North Las Vegas neighbors the result they wanted.

Pardee Homes has decided to withdraw a proposal for a 660-unit apartment complex in their community.

“My guess is we put up such a big stink about it they decided not to do it,” said Sarah Humphreys, a 28-year-old homeowner who became the opponents’ ringleader, at one point organizing an ice cream social to rally the troops.

Jennifer Lazovich, an attorney for Pardee, said the request to withdraw the site plan review from next week’s Planning Commission meeting was a “business decision.”

Many had expected North Las Vegas to allow the plans to proceed, given that a 1988 development agreement between the city and Pardee gave the company the right to use several parcels in the Eldorado development as it chose.

In April, the North Las Vegas City Council approved plans for a 320-unit apartment complex, with council members saying the 20-year-old development agreement prevented them from opposing the project.

Those apartments will be built on more than 30 acres at Centennial Parkway and Revere Street near Seastrand Park. The proposed 660-unit complex was planned for one block north along Deer Springs Way.

Councilwoman Shari Buck, who lives less than a mile from the proposed sites, opposed both plans. She and Councilman William Robinson voted against the 320-unit complex.

“I’m glad they did it,” Buck said about the withdrawal of the bigger project. “It makes me believe they someday want to put homes there and not apartments.”

Buck and her neighbors worried that the addition of hundreds of apartments in the area would increase traffic and crime, driving down property values in the middle-class neighborhood.

However, nothing prevents Pardee from later refiling plans to use the land for apartments or other multifamily residences. Lazovich said Pardee has no immediate plans to build on the site, which is zoned for commercial, single-family or multi-family development.

Humphreys’ efforts at warding off the apartments, which included collecting thousands of signatures on a petition and going door-to-door to raise $1,500 for the Save Our Community Ice Cream Social, have made her one of the most popular people in her neighborhood.

“It was my goal to push them away or stop them,” she said of the planned apartments.

For the community, the battle became a bonding experience. Drawn together by their opposition to what became known as simply “the apartments,” neighbors who previously had, at best, a nodding acquaintance got to know one another better, fostering a sense of community that Humphreys and others believe leaves the neighborhood forever changed for the better.

“It was nice to see people come together and unite,” she said. “I hate when people walk on other people and that’s what I felt Pardee was doing. I think if you come together and unite you’re more powerful. It’s just wonderful to see that.”

Discussion: 2 comments so far…

By vegaslee

5/23/08 at 9:49 a.m.

Suggest removal

I don't see that Pardee as trying to walk on anyone. They proposed a project for their property and the area did not like it. Very simple. No one was walking on anyone, they just wanted to build.

The project has been killed and in time Pardee will propose to build something else there. Not really a big deal.

No one was walking on anyone. The public spoke out and all turned out fine.
By Incredulous

5/23/08 at 10:37 a.m.

Suggest removal

Just a polite warning to home owners in North Las Vegas who may, in the future, choose to oppose Pardee's exercising its "contractual rights" to build apartment complexes in Eldorado.

I have close friends in California, simple homeowners who spoke out against Pardee's illegal bulldozing of hillsides not even owned by Pardee, and which were to be maintained in their natural state as part of the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy Rim of the Valley open space.

Pardee's supervisory employees who have not yet been laid off due to the downturn in the home building business are a bunch of neurotic, self serving, vicious [nasty adjective in plural].
In order to look good in the eyes of their supervisors, and save their careers, they will instruct Pardee's outside lawyers to file lawsuits against outspoken homeowners for "interference with contractual advantage". The Pardee project managers will freely state that their goal is to bankrupt and terrorize any member of the public who opposes them.

We here in Nevada do not have ANY meaningful laws to protect us from lawsuits by developers who do not like lobbying against their projects, and who do not like public insistance that local laws be enforced against their projects. The "anti-SLAPP" laws here in Nevada are a joke, written by lawyers for the big homebuilders.

Pardee's outside law firms are now hurting for legal work, and cash flow from Pardee's payment of legal fees. So Pardee's lawyers are all the more anxious to encourage neurotic Pardee employees to "sue the universe" at the drop of the hat. "Enforcing Pardee's rights" lines Pardee's lawyers pockets with cash, now, when they are desparate to get it.

Pardee builds a great house physically, but their senior management are ruthless [unflattering adjective]. If they've got the cojones to bulldoze park land they don't own in California, and then sue people who complain about it, they are certainly going to burn all of you innocent complainers in North Las Vegas when they decide to "enforce their contractual rights". They just aren't building now because they think the market isn't right.

So if you don't like what Pardee plans to build near your house, sell it and move away. Don't buy a Pardee house unless you carefully check the zoning entitlements and development agreements for their projects. These are very nasty, dangerous people who have no scruples in terms of economically and psychologically beating up the average citizen who thinks they have a First Amendment right to complain about a Pardee project.