Sky-diving proposal drawing opponents
April 5, 2010 - 11:00 pm
A proposed indoor sky-diving business on Sahara Avenue near Sixth Street is meeting stiff resistance from neighboring residents and businesses who say the project will bring noise and parking problems to an area that needs neither.
"It's just the wrong spot," said Stan Zurawski, who owns the Nevada Coin Mart building that would be within 10 feet of the sky-diving building, which would have a 78-foot-tall wind tunnel tower.
"It's going to create a heck of a lot of vibration and noise," Zurawski said. "It needs to be put someplace else, like an industrial area or a place that would complement what these guys are trying to do."
The proposal is scheduled to go before the Las Vegas City Council on Wednesday.
The site is in the ward of Mayor Pro Tem Gary Reese, who said he's still up in the air on the project.
"I just don't know," he said. "I've never been around one of those. They've got experts who say you won't be able to hear it, and (the other side) has experts who say you will be able to hear it.
"It's going to be a lively one," he said of the upcoming hearing.
The land is owned by Bodyflying US LLC, which lists Gary Speer of Tennessee as the company's principle.
As proposed, the building would be 9,900 square feet including the wind-tunnel tower, where a propeller would generate winds of up to 150 mph.
The development application asks for variances to allow 59 parking spaces instead of 69 and for smaller landscaping buffers than required by city rules, including having no buffer at all on the north and west sides of the property.
Speer and his attorney, Bob Gronauer, could not be reached for comment.
In a letter to the city, Gronauer said that traffic at the indoor sky-diving tower would be light, with no more than 20 visitors in an hour.
"The guests make reservations and are typically in small groups of three to five persons," he wrote. "The guests must receive instruction and special clothing prior to flying, which limits the number of people who can utilize the facility at the same time."
Opponents aren't buying it.
There is already an indoor sky-diving business near the Strip -- Vegas Indoor Skydiving, 200 Convention Center Drive. Opponents used activity there to challenge Bodyflying's parking and customer numbers.
They called on Superior Engineering Services to compare Vegas Indoor Skydiving with Bodyflying's proposal.
On a Wednesday, Thursday and Friday in October, engineers counted 35 vehicles in the Strip location's parking lot on two days and 22 vehicles the third day.
A letter from the engineering company quotes Brad Hess, the Strip facility's manager, as saying that those numbers represent about 25 percent of the people who would be "flying" on a peak usage day, such as during spring break season. That would mean as many as 136 vehicles would need space to park, the letter states, calling Bodyflying's parking plans "woefully inadequate."
There is street parking in the area that isn't being used now because many commercial and office buildings in the area are empty. When those buildings are in use again, there will be "virtually no empty parking stalls available for additional parking," the report states.
In addition to neighboring businesses, the Southridge and Beverly Green homeowners associations oppose the idea, as does state Rep. Tick Segerblom, D-Las Vegas. He said he's worried about Strip-style development spreading down Sahara Avenue.
"In the 2009 legislative session we were able to stop an attempt to expand the (gaming enterprise district) into residential areas of the city of Las Vegas," Segerblom wrote to the Las Vegas Planning Commission. "I fear that granting this variance would allow the interests we defeated in Carson City another bite at the apple."
Though he wouldn't voice support or opposition, Reese did echo one of the detractors' concerns -- the fact that this would be a single-use building, unlike an office building that could simply find other tenants.
"It's going to be a special building," Reese said. "So what happens in six months or a year if it goes kaput?"
Contact reporter Alan Choate at achoate@reviewjournal.com or 702-229-6435.