Sun City selects fire station site

By Jeff O'Brien

Friday, Sept. 12, 2008 | midnight

The Sun City Summerlin Board of Directors has selected a location for the community's first fire station, and whether the project moves forward will soon be up to the 7,781 Sun City homeowners.

After a series of meetings, the board decided that the 9th tee of the Palm Valley Golf Course — at the northwest corner of Del Webb Boulevard and Sundial Drive — would be the best spot for Las Vegas Fire & Rescue Station 107. The land is owned by the Association.

"It's a central location with good access to Lake Mead Boulevard, which is one of the main roads of the community," said David Steinman, Sun City Summerlin Community Association board member. "It's what I would call the most commercial location we could find in Sun City."

Other proposed sites near the Mountain Shadows Community Center and Desert Vista Community Center encountered greater opposition from nearby residents, Steinman said, and were ultimately rejected.

The 7,000-square-foot facility would house one fire truck and one rescue ambulance, with the 9th tee at Palm Valley moved east adjacent to the proposed building.

"I don't anticipate any problems if we proceed with construction," Steinman said. "That's a very level piece of land there."

The goal behind the new station would be to combat increasing response times. According to Las Vegas Fire & Rescue Chief Greg Gammon, Sun City Summerlin falls into a gap in the department's existing coverage areas, resulting in response times that could exceed the city's goal of 4 to 6 minutes.

In 2007, Las Vegas Fire & Rescue responded to 1,783 emergency medical service calls and 18 house fires in Sun City Summerlin.

Before the station can be built, however, two thirds of residential property owners — including absentee owners — in Sun City Summerlin need to approve an amendment to the community's covenants, conditions and deed restrictions, or CC&Rs.

Under the current provisions of the CC&Rs, such a development would not only require approval from each homeowner, but also from every Sun City mortgage holder.

This condition involving mortgage holders is an outdated requirement from the 1980s — designed to protect them during the initial development of Sun City Summerlin — that would require unnecessary votes, Steinman said.

In conjunction with seeking approval for the fire station, the board is asking homeowners to approve a change in the CC&Rs so that mortgage holders don't need to approve the project, with the amendment only applying to this particular development.

Ballots will be distributed to each homeowner in the November issue of the community's "Link" magazine, which comes out Oct. 26.

In addition to proposing a change to the CC&Rs, the ballot will also call for Sun City Summerlin's Board of Directors to deed the site of the fire station to the city of Las Vegas for $1. The city would cover the cost of building and operating the station. If the site ever ceased to be operated as a city of Las Vegas fire station, it would be transferred back to the Sun City Summerlin Community Association.

The city would pay for construction of the station, although no cost estimate is yet available.

Some residents such as Bernard Silver have lingering concerns about the proposed fire station, one of which is whether Sun City Summerlin's Community Emergency Response Training program, or CERT, will be accommodated in the new facility.

CERT is a nationwide program that provides disaster preparedness training to the public, and approximately 50 Sun City Summerlin residents are CERT-certified.

"I've asked the board to include a provision in the deal that would provide room in the fire station for CERT equipment and meetings, but it hasn't been done," Silver said. "We need space for radios, a generator and supplies, whether that be in an extra room or in an attic."

Steinman, however, said he has been communicating with Gammon regarding the community's CERT program.

"We're not to that stage yet, but I've requested that it be involved or accommodated somehow," he said.

"This action will cost the unit owners virtually nothing and save the lives of our residents," he said.

Jeff O’Brien can be reached at 990-8957 or [email protected].