Town Center: City's vision put to the test

Las Vegas leaders see the city's future in an empty slice of desert in the northwest part of town.

At least another 300,000 people will move into that area beyond Summerlin during the next quarter-century, city Planning and Development Director Theresa O'Donnell says.

Las Vegas is no stranger to rapid urban growth, but this development will be unlike any other in the city's history.

It will be planned.

Unlike other planned communities, such as Green Valley and Summmerlin, there isn't a single developer creating a plan for the neighborhood. Instead, the city is playing that role.

Jim Veltman is an independent urban planner who has helped plan the area. He has worked for the city but is now retained by landowners in the area.

For the past three years, he has been preaching the virtues of a concept called Town Center -- a modern-day downtown to serve the suburban sprawl expected to continue its growth in the city's northwest.

Veltman wants to contain office and retail development into an area that is between 2,000 and 2,500 acres. The area now is mostly empty desert near where Durango Drive and U.S. 95 meet.

The development will be similar to the Mill Avenue development in Tempe, Ariz., he said.

"It has been very successful there and in cities across California. We think there is real potential here in Las Vegas as well," Veltman said.

This would be a radical departure from the way other neighborhoods in the city have developed.

"This is more of a Main Street-type concept. Businesses will be close together with plenty of parking in parking garages. Considering the climate, there is also a need to provide plenty of shade. There probably won't be quite one parking garage for every block."

The plan calls for about 200 acres of parks to be interspersed in the commercial district.

In about a year, the planned Las Vegas Beltway will intersect U.S. 95 in this area and spark continued growth, he said.

The Las Vegas City Council and Clark County commissioners have adopted the Town Center concept as part of their plan for the area. The plan they adopted calls for the area to be 2,002 acres, said Sonya Douglass, a spokesperson for the city planning department.

But last month the city Planning Commission called for a larger Town Center -- 2,615 acres. This upset some county officials who did not want the original plan changed.

City Couincilman Larry Brown says he will offer a compromise at the Sept. 14 City Council meeting that calls for keeping Town Center at its originally planned size -- unless the city annexes more land, which would allow it to expand the boundaries of Town Center.

Brown, who represents the area, describes the Town Center plan as "our last chance to do things the right way."

"Let's face it, this is really the last place where we will see Las Vegas grow. This time, we have do things the right way. We have to concern ourselves with issues like aesthetics and traffic flow."

Both Veltman and O'Donnell said U.S. 95 cannot accommodate much more traffic, so it is critical that a job base be created in the northwest to reduce the number of commuters.

Veltman believes that Town Center will eventually have 100,000 people working there. O'Donnell, on the other hand, is even more optimistic. She believes that as many as 160,000 could end up working there.

"We can't have a situation where you have all of those people living in the northwest but working down on the Strip," Veltamn said. "I don't care how wide you make U.S. 95, it just can't accommodate that much traffic. We have to have a strong job base in the northwest, and that's what the Town Center concept is all about."

The jobs will be a mix of retail, office and professional. The plan adopted by the city prohibits the construction of any casinos within Town Center, Brown said.

"We probably will not see much development in the area for another five years," Veltman said. "It could be another 20 before the area is fully developed. What we are really looking at here is a long-term plan for developing."

"In the past, whenever it looked like there was going to be a busy intersection in a residential area, people would come in and buy up land there for some type of commercial development. We don't want that to happen in the northwest part of the city. We are doing everything we can to prevent commercial encroachment into residential areas."

The first major obstacle the Town Center concept has faced has been the development of Timber Lake, a residential development near the middle of the area that had been planned solely for commercial development.

"That was developed before the city adopted the plan. Now that couldn't happen," Veltman said.

Eva Paulussen, who has lived in Timber Lake for about one year, said she has concerns about Town Center plans.

"The plans call for it being much more densely commercial than we thought it would be when we moved in," she said. "We think it could improve our property values if it is developed the way the plan calls for. But we are concerned because the city has a history of issuing lots of variances."

O'Donnell said the Town Center plan is a radical departure from past city development practices.

"Before, we pretty much let the market dictate what would be constructed. We ended up with a lot of strip malls, which isn't always as aesthetically pleasing as one would like. ... Our conservative estimate is that 300,000 people will eventually live in the northwest part of the city. There are 400,000 people living in Las Vegas right now. So we are talking about almost a whole other city being built out there."

While the Las Vegas area has other planned communities, such as Green Valley and and Summerlin, what makes this project different is that the plan isn't being imposed by the developer, but by the city.

"Summerlin and Green Valley could be developed under one plan because you had one developer doing each of those projects," O'Donnell said. "But the northwest is different because we are dealing with many different landowners. But what we still want is a well-planned community."

Veltman says it could be 25 years before the Town Center is fully developed. But at least one one major landowner in the area is more optimistic.

"If the economy holds, I'd say the area will be fully developed in 13 to 15 years," said Don Romano, a developer with about 250 acres not far from Town Center.

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