Friday, Dec. 3, 1999 | 11:08 a.m.
Two decades ago, Henderson's downtown area was thriving with small businesses, offices and shoppers.
Today, some stretches of road in the Old Town area are virtually deserted. On the "Main Street" of Henderson, Water Street off of Lake Mead Drive, typical offices offer unemployment insurance and juvenile probation services -- hardly draws to bring in retail shoppers and their dollars.
But nearly a half-decade after the city designated the downtown area a redevelopment district -- targeting property tax dollars and federal funding for investment -- work to build a large retail and office center is moving forward. Advocates hope that the Fountain Plaza project can be the catalyst to invigorate the moribund neighborhood.
The Fountain Plaza project would bring offices, "large box" and boutique retail businesses, a hotel and a new, larger convention center to what is now just a couple of dusty, vacant lots at the intersection of Water Street and Basic Road. The effort is spearheaded by the Phyllis E. Thompson Cos. in cooperation with the city.
The Henderson City Council earlier this year gave the companies the exclusive right to develop the project on about three acres of city-owned land on the corner of Water and Basic, matched with a similar amount of land owned by the companies.
The $90 million to $100 million development would phase in offices, stores, a hotel and convention center.
The private investment would be leveraged with financial support from the Henderson Redevelopment Agency, city staffers and the developer agree, but the actual amount and structure of that support hasn't been established.
Mary Kay Peck, Henderson Community Planning director -- and interim director of the redevelopment agency -- said the agency's formula is usually $1 of public funding for every $8 of private investment. The public support can come through low interest loans, grants, land-lease agreements and other methods, she said.
The city will begin looking at funding options Monday, Peck said. The redevelopment effort passed another milestone Thursday when a committee met for the first time to discuss design standards for what would be a rebuilt downtown, she said.
For some business owners downtown, the redevelopment effort has been a long time coming.
Mayor Jim Gibson agreed that the pace of redevelopment has been slow.
"We're frustrated with the pace of this too," Gibson said. The city put more than $50 million into the construction of public buildings such as the City Hall and the criminal justice center across Water Street, but Henderson does not have the capital to simply build a retail environment from scratch, he said.
Private investment depends on the market conditions for any area, said Henderson Assistant City Manager Terry Zerkle, and that market really wasn't there years ago. But he said the situation is turning around, thanks largely to aggressive subdivision development surrounding the downtown area.
"There are a lot of new housing starts, essentially in every direction," he said. "It makes it a viable option for commercial development."
And as undeveloped land becomes harder to find and more expensive to develop within the city limits, developers increasingly will turn to redevelopment of older areas, he said.
"Our redevelopment efforts, in many respects, are still in there infancy," Zerkle said. But now there "is someone in the market willing to make the investment." "We have to have private investment," Gibson said. The Fountain Plaza effort is the first large private investment in the redevelopment district, he said.
"They're the first one to come forward," he said. "We now have a private initiative...I think everything is on course."
David Wood, a former city councilman working as a consultant to the Phyllis E. Thompson Cos. for the project, said he believes the project could be the lynchpin for bringing more private investment to the redevelopment district.
The project will bring 1,000 jobs downtown and will generate $27 million in property taxes over the 30-year life of the district, Wood said. Much of those taxes, under redevelopment district rules, would be reinvested into the district.
"I think everybody realizes the importance of bringing people to the downtown area," he said.
Part of that importance is that Henderson truly had a historical downtown, one of the few towns in the state that had such as area, said Victor Vincent, vice-president of the Phyllis E. Thompson Cos. Vincent has lived in Henderson since the 1950s, and has seen downtown boom, then bust.
"We've lost a lot of businesses downtown," he said. But the project "will improve the whole business climate," he added.
For businesswoman Phyllis E. Thompson, also a longtime city resident, the project is personal. She's also seen the downtown area degrade in the last two decades, a paradox in what the federal Census Bureau calls the fastest growing city in the United States.
The hardest hits came in the 1980s and 1990s as large retail operations, such as the Galleria Mall at Sunset, drained shoppers away from downtown.
"We haven't got anything (downtown)," Thompson lamented. "We have to drive several miles just to get to a nice restaurant."
Much of the downtown redevelopment effort has centered on events such as the annual ArtFest or the weekly -- and successful -- Farmer's Market, which is held in the common parking lot shared by City Hall and the existing, small Convention Center.
The new convention center envisioned for the Fountain Plaza project would be about triple the size of the existing center, Wood said. The new convention center would bring in hundreds of thousands more people per year to the downtown area, he said.
Wood said the company and city should complete negotiations on a financing plan for the project by mid-February. Vincent said actual construction could start by late next year.
"Of course, we're like everybody else," Thompson said. "We want it started yesterday."
Doug Reifsteck, president of the Henderson Development Association, is a believer. He agrees that downtown Henderson needs help, and he said efforts to revitalize other downtowns throughout the country have worked -- so why not Henderson?
"It's a fairly lengthy process, but it can be down successfully in Henderson," he said.
Not everybody is fully comfortable with the idea of downtown redevelopment. Sandy O'Dell is co-owner of O'Dell Creations, a small ceramic studio at Pacific and Water streets.
She's afraid her business might have to move because of redevelopment.
"Nobody knows what anybody's doing," she said. "I don't know what will happen. It's up in the air.
"Our business is doing quite well, and we like it here," O'Dell said, adding that moving is a big expense for a small business.
But Mayor Gibson said small businesses such as O'Dell's have little to fear and a lot to gain from redevelopment.
"We would hope that businesses like hers would thrive," he said. "I don't know that anyone has to leave...Certainly the intention is not to drive out a successful business."
The economic impact of redevelopment would be positive for O'Dell and many other downtown businesses, he said.
Many longtime Henderson residents welcome the idea of restoring a thriving downtown.
One of those boosters is Barbara Whetstone, who sells fruits and vegetables at the Farmers Market on Thursdays. So far, redevelopment hasn't been entirely positive for her -- she owns a home in the district for which property taxes have doubled in the last few years.
But Whetstone, who has lived in Henderson since 1950, said she remembers when city residents used to come to the downtown area regularly to meet their friends and shop.
"I remember when Water Street was just dirt. I saw it blossom in the 60s and 70s," she said. The Farmers Market that started earlier this year has started to draw people back downtown, she said.
She's not sure if the city and private investors can jump-start the downtown economy, but she'd like to see it.
"I think it's going to be a good thing," Whetstone said.
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