Thursday, May 8, 1997 | 11:59 a.m.
Commissioners voted unanimously Wednesday to support Scottsdale-based Olympic Group Inc.'s concept to develop 1,850 acres in the southern Las Vegas Valley. Approving final plans will depend on whether Olympic Group follows a mantra commissioners repeated at Wednesday's hearing.
"We're all very concerned about growth paying for growth," Commissioner Lorraine Hunt said.
The project, called Olympic Highlands, entails 6,000 to 8,000 apartments and homes ranging in price from $100,000 to $1 million. It also could include offices, retail centers, casinos and what company President Garry Goett calls "an upscale industrial park."
Olympic acquired most of the land in exchanges with the federal government for wilderness near Sunrise Mountain, Oliver Ranch at Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area and Lake Tahoe's Zephyr Cove. In one of those deals, the company swapped 35 acres for 1,357 acres of developed land; in the other, completed in April, it swapped 138 acres for 969 acres.
"I just want people to know those deals were very complicated," Goett said. "The whole exchange process that we've done has been carefully, carefully scrutinized in Washington."
But nearby residents were less concerned Wednesday about the fairness of land swaps than about how urban sprawl from Olympic Highlands would affect their horse ranches, their mountain views and the clarity of their night skies.
"They're going to rape that land. And nobody's here to stop it. We're devastated," said Judy Miller, who, along with her husband, Tom, has spent the past three years building a solar-powered adobe home on five acres surrounded by what's now Olympic's land.
Chris Kaempfer, a lobbyist for the project, reminded commissioners that they have approved plans for 20,000 new hotel rooms over the past six months. He said the Olympic development would be a 12-minute car ride from the Strip and could house new workers without exacerbating traffic, especially in the gridlocked northwest.
Wanting more evidence of the project's benefits, commissioners asked for a "fiscal impact study" on how the development would affect infrastructure and, therefore, county tax dollars.
"There is no way I can approve moving forward" without that document, said Commissioner Yvonne Atkinson Gates, who hopes that study will lead to "ways to pay for things that local governments can't pay for anymore."
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