Residents to voice opposition against Badlands golf course plan at Las Vegas meeting

Upward of 70 Queensridge residents are expected to attend a Tuesday meeting to express disapproval of a proposal to build more than 2,500 housing units on the nearby Badlands Golf Course, Queensridge homeowners association officials say.

On Tuesday, the Las Vegas Planning Commission will weigh in on the project after a 90-day delay. A special Planning Commission meeting on the proposal is scheduled for 6 p.m. Tuesday in Las Vegas City Council chambers.

Discord about the proposal has spurred two lawsuits, and neighbors have voiced concerns about everything from declining property values, view blockages and increased traffic to special treatment for the project at City Hall and a lack of due process.

Queensridge homeowners’ association board members Elaine Wenger-Roesener and Ron Iversen say the association has surveyed residents and found “overwhelmingly” that people aren’t in favor of the proposal, and most aren’t on the golf course.

“It’s absolutely not true that a select few are driving this,” Wenger-Roesener said.

EHB Cos., led by CEO Yohan Lowie, bought the golf course, which is south of Alta Drive and west of Rampart Boulevard, in 2015. At a recent meeting on the proposed development held at City Hall, attorney Chris Kaempfer presented a development plan that calls for 2,400 units, and potentially 200 assisted-living units on top of that.

The development proposal includes a multifamily 720-unit project dubbed The Seventy and single-family “estate” properties called The Preserve.

A previous version of the proposal called for more than 3,000 units. The project is modeled after a development in Irvine, California, which has 3,000 units on 59 acres, Kaempfer said.

EHB Cos. developed the nearby Tivoli Village.

“There has been an attempt to address, at least to some degree, the density concerns,” Kaempfer said.

Developer David Mason lives in the Queensridge Towers and has a balcony view of the golf course below and much of the valley including the Strip. Mason isn’t eager to have the golf course, on which he occasionally sees coyotes roaming, replaced with more than 2,000 housing units, he said.

Mason contends that city streets, schools, police, fire and other services won’t support the density level that’s being proposed.

“I haven’t spoken to one person here who isn’t against it,” he said.

Councilman Bob Beers, who represents that area of the western Las Vegas Valley, said he thinks the density is compatible with the surrounding area. Some residents have called for the city to condemn the land and compensate the owner for its value, Beers said.

“That’s very difficult to ask” city taxpayers to pay millions of dollars for that when it doesn’t directly affect most of them, Beers said.

A group including businessman Jack Binion and gaming lawyer Frank Schreck filed a lawsuit in December naming three related limited liability companies as defendants, citing efforts to “circumvent” state law and city code throughout the process.

A second lawsuit, filed this summer, says the golf course in the master-planned development wasn’t meant to become a residential development.

That complaint, filed by Robert and Nancy Peccole, whose property abuts the course, includes EHB Cos. and Las Vegas among the defendants. It alleges a breach of contract and a fraudulent scheme to “deprive the plaintiffs as Queensridge homeowners of their entitled rights to a golf course, open space and flood control.”

Iversen moved to Queensridge about a year ago and said that in the short time he’s lived there, he’s been disappointed by the conflicts and confusion.

“It’s really left a bad taste in my mouth with regards to how the city works and how decisions are made in this town,” Iversen said.

Contact Jamie Munks at jmunks@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0340. Follow @JamieMunksRJ on Twitter.