Las Vegas housing project that concerned neighbors lands approval

Clark County commissioners approved plans for a housing project that raised concerns among neighbors in the surrounding rural area.

Richmond American Homes secured approval Wednesday to develop a 99-lot subdivision on 19 acres just south of Blue Diamond Road at Tenaya Way, in the southwest Las Vegas Valley.

Multiple neighbors — including the famed magician Teller, who has lived in the area for almost 30 years — have said that they worried the project would bring an influx of traffic to the quiet, surrounding community, which has horses, chickens, stretches of open land, and homes on large lots.

Builders have put up other housing tracts over the past several years in the surrounding area, a designated Rural Neighborhood Preservation zone. They built homes on roughly half-acre lots, given the area’s land-use rules that prevent suburban-style projects with houses crammed together on small parcels.

A 5-acre section of Richmond American’s project site falls under those rules and would have nine, large lots in compliance with those policies.

But the balance of the site, closer to Blue Diamond, fell under different land-use rules, and the builder drew up plans for 90 lots there.

‘Absolutely destroys’ rural area

Several people voiced concerns about the project at Wednesday’s meeting.

Caroline Greene, who lives near the site, told the County Commission that the project plan “absolutely destroys” the area’s rural character.

She said that people ride horses, walk their dogs and ride bikes along Meranto Avenue, which borders the project site to the south.

Greene argued that Meranto would become a more typical suburban street that drivers would use to access the new development.

Teller, the mononymous, silent-on-stage half of longtime Vegas headliners Penn & Teller, previously described Meranto as a horse-trail-type street with little traffic.

Olivia Hillcoat, another neighbor, told the commission on Wednesday that the surrounding rural area is not “just a line on a zoning map” but is a lifestyle and an identity.

“Once dense, residential zoning is allowed to creep in piece by piece, we can never get that back,” she said.

The Clark County Planning Commission gave the green light to the project in October.

Builder ‘bent over backwards’

Land-use specialist Stephanie Gronauer, representing Richmond American, said that the Nevada Department of Transportation approved a median cut on Blue Diamond at Tenaya.

This would allow westbound drivers to turn south off the thoroughfare toward the new subdivision, meaning they won’t have to drive through the surrounding residential area to access it.

Gronauer, a partner with law firm Kaempfer Crowell, also noted on Wednesday that Meranto is a public street that anyone can use, and she argued that the neighbors’ goal “has been to get us to go away.”

Commissioner Justin Jones, whose district includes the project site, said that Richmond American has “bent over backwards” to come up with a proposal that meets the community’s needs and protects the rural preservation zone.

He also indicated that every time a project idea is shot down, it opens the door to another plan that could be bigger or more densely developed.

“I think that this is a good project,” he said.

Contact Eli Segall at esegall@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0342.