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Friday, February 04, 2000
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal
U.S. 95 plans swerving into bumpy road
Families and business owners who will be forced to move when a highway widens brace for a battle.
By Joelle Babula
Review-Journal
As planning gets under way this week to widen U.S. Highway 95 with $300 million in new federal funds, long-time business owners are rounding up eminent domain attorneys and residents are saying goodbye to homes they've lived in the past 30 years.
"This is good news for commuters, but there will be eminent domain issues," said Scott Macgruder, spokesman for the Nevada Department of Transportation. "Once we start the design, we'll find out exactly who will be impacted."
Some locals, however, already know their homes and businesses will turn into pavement or sound walls over the next few years.
"It's not fair that people like myself have to be ruined financially so that others can save three minutes of driving time," said John Arfuso, the owner of the Expressway Texaco station on Jones Boulevard. Arfuso already has an eminent domain attorney ready to pounce in the event he doesn't receive what he believes to be fair compensation for his 17-year-old business.
About 346 homes, apartment buildings and businesses lie in the path of the U.S. 95 widening project, Transportation Department consultant Cathy Razor said.
The $510 million project, paid for with state, local and federal funds, is expected to decrease congestion along the busy corridor.
With the $300 million in federal money released for the project last week, plans have begun to widen the freeway to 10 lanes from Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard to Rainbow Boulevard and to six lanes from Rainbow to Craig Road.
One lane in each direction will be designated for carpools and buses. They will be the first such lanes in Nevada, Macgruder said.
The project also includes improvements on some arterial streets and the addition of park-and-ride lots to encourage motorists to hop on public transportation and leave their cars behind.
"About 170,000 cars travel through that U.S. 95 corridor each day," Macgruder said. "By 2020, it's anticipated to increase t0 250,000. It's a very busy corridor."
The busy freeway won't see much relief for the next seven years, the time span for project completion. Because there are no right-of-way issues complicating the first part of the project, from Rainbow to Craig, designs are already being prepared and construction is scheduled to begin in September. This section of the freeway will be widened to three lanes on each side as it runs along the Rainbow Curve and heads toward Craig Road.
The rest of the highway expansion, however, will include taking over homes, apartment buildings and businesses on either side of U.S. 95. About 188 single-family homes, 138 apartments, condominiums and duplexes, and 20 businesses will have to be demolished. Adcock Elementary School, on the south side of U.S. 95 near Torrey Pines Drive, will be demolished and rebuilt.
"We're looking to do the least amount of impact, so sometimes we look to the north side of the highway for property and sometimes to the south side," Razor said. "Generally, it will be just one row of houses on either side, and we've been working with the neighborhoods since '95. They are very familiar with what's going on."
Although a final assessment of which homes and businesses will be destroyed has not been made, several neighborhoods have been approached about the likely possibility.
"I've been in this house for 30 years, and the very idea of having to move after that long is daunting, to say the least," said Helen Hall, a resident who will most likely lose her home, a home she and her husband, Roger, recently paid off. "We fought this thing tooth-and-nail, but at this point, I'm not really interested in being next to 10 lanes of traffic."
Hall said her biggest concern is that she and her husband are able to find a place that's equivalent to what they have now.
"We've done a lot to this house and we run three businesses out of it," she said.
Jean Withers, Hall's neighbor, isn't thrilled about having to move, but she said she's now resigned to the prospect and is trying to look on the positive side of having a new home.
"I guess I'll get a newer house out of this deal, but I feel sorry for people who have built up businesses around here," Withers said.
Arfuso is just one of the business owners who will no longer have a business to run. His main concern is that he's paid a fair price for his business, especially since a gas station is difficult to relocate.
"I have a business that's worth a ton of money, and the state of Nevada wants to give me $20,000 for it," Arfuso said. "I've lived here for 30 years and I paid a quarter of a million dollars for this business."
According to Joe Freeman, an agent with the Transportation Department's right-of-way office, $20,000 is the maximum amount of money given to a business owner in lieu of relocation. If an owner decides to relocate, the government pays for the moving expenses.
"We go by federal law on this," Freeman said. "Federal law states we buy the property and all the improvements to it, but we don't buy the business itself. That $20,000 is essentially saying, well, you're choosing not to relocate, so you're entitled to a certain amount of money."
That maximum $20,000 paid to a business owner is added to whatever the actual property is worth.
Arfuso is adamant, however, that it's impossible to relocate a gas station and that $20,000 does not equal a business that brings in more than $2 million annually.
"They think they can hand me $20,000 to walk? That's all right for the guy with a poodle shop or pizza place, but you just can't go out there and buy a piece of property to sell gasoline and service cars," Arfuso said. "It's impossible to relocate my business. It's predicated on this location. The people I do business with are people I've been doing business with for years and years and years."
Arfuso has not filed any lawsuits regarding eminent domain, but he's prepared to do so if he does not receive what he considers adequate compensation.
Right-of-way issues will not be resolved until final design plans are set and businesses and homes in the project's path are identified. That is expected to occur in the next two years.
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Printable version of this story
U.S. Highway 95 west from the Spaghetti Bowl is captured in an aerial photo.
Reveiw-Journal file photo
John Arfuso, the owner of Expressway Texaco on Jones Boulevard, stands in front of his business, which he will lose when U.S. Highway 95 is widened. Arfuso, a resident of Las Vegas for 30 years, has hired an eminent domain lawyer to make sure he is fairly compensated for the business he has run for the past 17 years.
Photo by Jim Laurie.
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