Family awarded $15 million after bitter airspace fight

A Las Vegas family that missed out on a chance to develop land near McCarran International Airport and blamed airspace restrictions will receive nearly $15 million from Clark County, an attorney for the family said Tuesday.

The money represents the outcome of a lawsuit filed 16 years ago by the Heers family, former owners of Vacation Village.

The family lost the property to foreclosure -- and their dream to redevelop it with three seven-story hotel towers -- after airspace restrictions were imposed on the land to accommodate jet traffic on a proposed runway at McCarran.

The lawsuit asserted that the airspace restrictions amounted to a taking of the property, which would require the county to pay compensation.

In 2005, U.S. District Court Judge Clive Jones agreed, awarding the family $10.1 million.

Clark County appealed to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco, which in July upheld Jones' decision that the restrictions equated to a taking, but made room to recalculate the amount of damages. Further arguments over the amount occurred in January.

Paul Ray, attorney for the family, said the county could have saved taxpayers millions of dollars had it not fought against it so long and hard in court.

"At that point, they would have taken the $10 million. When they won the cross appeal, that's when they got more," Ray said.

Kirk Lenhard, an attorney for the county, defended the way the case was handled.

"It is a gross distortion of what happened. A gross distortion," Lenhard said of the suggestion the county would have saved money settling earlier.

He said the final amount followed two demands from plaintiffs in December, one for $85 million and another for $50 million.

"The county had no choice but to go to trial," Lenhard said. "But quite frankly, the result at trial was significantly less than the demand."

He also disputed the plaintiffs' characterization of the payout as a settlement, saying a better description would be an agreement to a judgment.

During the course of the battle, not only did costs of litigation increase, the Heers lost their property to foreclosure, Vacation Village shut down and former owners Carol and Evelyn Heers died.

When the county eventually pays damages, proceeds that aren't earmarked for attorneys and other costs would go to the Heers' children, Ray said.

According to court documents and news accounts of the case, the dispute goes back to 1988, when the family conceived a notion to expand the Vacation Village to include three seven-story towers.

The property, about two miles south of Mandalay Bay on Las Vegas Boulevard, had been in the family's hands since the 1960s when Carol Heers and his brother, Chuck, bought 25 acres with a plan to build a casino.

Contact reporter Benjamin Spillman at bspillman@reviewjournal.com or 702-477-3861.