Road project to provide better access to Sun City Anthem

By Kyle B. Hansen

Friday, Sept. 24, 2010 | 2:05 a.m.

Sun City Anthem residents are finally going to get a long-awaited road for better access to their part of Henderson.

Anthem and the surrounding neighborhoods are largely separated from the rest of Henderson and the Las Vegas Valley, with only two routes in and out: Eastern Avenue, which is heavily congested, and Volunteer Boulevard, which is bumpy and only two narrow lanes.

But the city is finishing work on Volunteer Boulevard and Executive Airport Drive, which provide access to Volunteer from St. Rose Parkway. The road is newly paved, thanks to federal stimulus money.

But it will soon be under construction again, when a second project begins to widen Volunteer and Executive Airport to four lanes instead of two and to complete the long-awaited Bicentennial Parkway and Via Inspirada route.

Residents of the area are so interested in the project that more than 30 showed up to a press conference Thursday.

“In 23 years of doing this, I have never seen this many residents as this type of a function,” Henderson Mayor Andy Hafen said. “We know your concerns.”

The project will greatly improve the Volunteer route into Sun City Anthem and provide a third way into the area, reducing congestion on Eastern Avenue and Sun City Anthem Drive and Anthem Parkway, which loop through the area.

“It will alleviate a lot of the traffic on the Sun City Anthem loop, which will be nice for our community,” said resident Jeff Graber. “In our section, which is 55 and older, we want a quieter, calmer neighborhood, and this may help. But right now there’s so many people speeding all around that circle.”

Plus, it will relieve some of the residents’ concerns about safety.

“Right now we’ve got 7,000 homes in Anthem and we’ve got two ways out, so we’ve really got a problem,” Mike Albert said. “If there was an emergency, a disaster of some kind, we could conceivably have a problem getting out or exiting our tract.”

Via Inspirada and Bicentennial Parkway were supposed to built years ago as developers added homes to the area, but the recession has stalled almost all development in the area, leaving residents of already built sections without improvements they were promised.

“This is rubble here and this was supposed to be a thriving, built-up community with apartments, houses, condos and businesses,” said Dave Leshefsky, pointing to the desert area south of Volunteer Boulevard.

The road improvements are finally coming, city officials say, but they are coming in two phases.

The project to repave Volunteer and Executive Airport is almost done. That project was funded by nearly $900,000 of federal stimulus money. But a federal requirement meant the money could only be used to repave the road, not widen it or make other improvements.

So city officials decided to use the money to repave the road and leave the edges clean so that future money could be used to more easily widen it.

That money came after the state legislature extended a sales tax used by the Regional Transportation Commission for road projects.

The city now has the $7.5 million to widen the two roads and build Via Inspirada and Bicentennial Parkway. That project is expected to begin in December or January and finish next fall.

Work will begin on the new roads first, so when Volunteer and Executive Airport are under construction, residents will be able to use Bicentennial and Via Inspirada to avoid the work zone.

The project also includes a new intersection and traffic signal where Volunteer, Via Inspirada and Executive Airport meet, plus the roads will have six-foot wide shoulders for bicycles and the intersections will have new street lights, Assistant Director of Public Works Robert Herr said.

In addition to the improvements for residents of the area, city officials stressed the economic stimulus aspects of the project.

“Those orange cones...are frustrations for some but are also a welcome sight, because it is new jobs and new opportunities in our community,” said City Councilwoman Debra March, who is also a member of the RTC board. “It’s also the development that we’ve been calling for.”

Residents just hope the city’s plans don’t end up like the developer’s promises.

“Sometimes they say things and it doesn’t work out,” Leshefsky said.

The city has already advertised the project and expects to approve a contractor at a November council meeting.