Struggling district first needs residents

The historic area known as West Las Vegas needs a lot of things: new businesses, a grocery store, investments in infrastructure, remodeling and new construction, and better transit access, to name a few.

But first it needs more people.

That's one of the conclusions reached Sunday at a workshop that paired urban planning experts from across the country -- all in town for an American Planning Association conference -- with residents and activists from the area, which was once the thriving center of Las Vegas' black community.

"You don't have enough households to support businesses right now," said Debbie Roberts, an environmental consultant and association member from the Los Angeles area. "So your first step is to build up your households."

Exactly, said Las Vegas City Councilman Ricki Barlow.

"That's what I've been saying from Day 1," he said, "and I'm glad that they get it."

The hard part, of course, is figuring out how to do it.

There are several hurdles. While vacant land abounds in the district, it tends to be in small, individually owned parcels, which are not exactly attractive to a developer looking to build new housing.

People also are attached to their properties, which usually belonged to parents or grandparents and represent a big part of their families' local histories.

There's also a fair amount of distrust in the community. At the conference, several of the dozens of people in attendance noted residents' fierce antipathy to being included in the city's redevelopment area, which would have made additional development funds available. The reason? People thought the city would steal their property.

Barlow said he, too, is wary of using the city's eminent domain power to assemble packages of land to present to developers. Under eminent domain, a government can forcibly take property from its owners for a fair price.

A better model, he said, might be one in which people voluntarily grant an option on their property that would be exercised when it's time for a project to start.

The fact that the real estate market is tumbling makes this a good time to move forward, he said.

"This is the best time to start preparing, so as the pendulum starts to track upward, we're ready to go," Barlow said. "You'll have the canvas in your hands. It's assembled and ready to go."

West Las Vegas is formally defined as a 3.5-square-mile area bordered by Carey Avenue on the north, Bonanza Road on the south, Interstate 15 on the east and Rancho Drive on the west. But the focus Sunday was on a smaller area around Jackson Avenue, which in the 1940s and '50s was known as the "Black Strip."

Segregation was alive and well in Las Vegas then, and blacks created a parallel city within a city, complete with nightclubs, casinos, doctors' offices, banks and stores.

The color lines began to crack in the 1950s, and as the civil rights movement progressed and blacks had more living and entertainment options, the area was decimated.

In addition to attracting residents, boosters should focus on making the area more attractive by building wider sidewalks and other pedestrian improvements, landscaping, and helping existing businesses improve their exteriors, conference participants said.

Lee Brown, a planning consultant from Illinois, cautioned against being too attached to the district's history.

"The original core is probably larger than what you can support today," he said.

And while it will take time to get the housing effort started, it will be still longer before the one-time jewel of the neighborhood, Jackson Avenue, has any chance of reclaiming its historic glory.

"We will not be able to start by rebuilding Jackson," said Hannah Brown, a longtime West Las Vegas resident who helped moderate Sunday's workshop.

"Jackson street will have to be a result of the revitalization."

Contact reporter Alan Choate at achoate @reviewjournal.com or 702-229-6435.