Decades later, redevelopment on right track

Greg Harman

Sunday, July 23, 2000 | 10:18 a.m.

From tent city to factory town to sprawling suburban compound, Henderson's history is one of unfurling boundaries and dynamic real estate growth.

This fastest growing of large American cities has developed somewhat like a gangly teenager: physically expanding its borders while its character and identity remain ill-formed and undefined in a stagnating downtown.

And it has not avoided the corresponding growing pains.

For decades business and city leaders have cried for the renewal of Henderson's heart: a collection of aging townsite homes and drowsy mom-and-pop business ventures lining Water Street.

For decades little progress has been made.

"Whether it was fear of failure or just not being sure what to do -- I don't know," said Ann Barron, Henderson's former economic development director. "There was so much going on in other areas. Downtown is not nearly as glamorous."

After all, when growth did come in the late 1970s, Henderson was absorbed in the Green Valley explosion of master-planned communities with powerful developers like American Nevada and Del Webb digging in with their dollars. American Nevada is owned by the Greenspun family, which owns the Sun.

"We were known as Hootersville, this dirty little factory town," recounted Selma Bartlett, executive vice president and regional president of BankWest of Nevada.

Bartlett, who managed one of two Henderson banks at the time, worked to push redevelopment of downtown during that early boom as a member of the citizens group Action Committee Downtown.

But with Green Valley in the works, the group was unable to lure developers to the townsite area.

"No one had faith in us. They still did not accept us as a town that was going to mature and grow," Bartlett said.

Though the city did grow -- from 12,500 residents in 1960 to approach the cusp of 200,000 this year -- downtown has languished.

"There hasn't been a lot to get excited about," said Barry Fieldman, a member and former chairman of the Henderson Redevelopment Advisory Commission, a committee appointed by the City Council to help guide Henderson through its rebirth.

Efforts to revive the townsite date as far back as 1962, when the town's Urban Renewal Agency called for the demolition or removal of the homes and businesses along Water Street, structures it termed "substandard."

But most townsite homes weathered that challenge and the city has since switched gears, instead pursuing beautification efforts aimed at dressing up the area's main avenues.

It took almost 10 years to get palm trees planted along Boulder Highway at a cost that escalated from less than $3 million in 1983 to more than $9 million by 1992.

This was followed by the Water Street Beautification Project approved by the City Council in 1992. The four-month, $1.8 million effort added palm trees, bushy medians and street lights to six blocks of downtown Henderson.

Residents complained of construction delays, visual impairments and the reduction of downtown parking spaces.

And more than one business failed during the period.

Palm tree fatality

"I was killed by a palm tree," laments Othena Williams, a Henderson Chamber of Commerce committee member and former downtown business owner. "They left me one parking space and a palm tree."

Williams operated a women's clothing shop on Water Street for 20 years, but the palm tree project did her in.

But with the pain of construction behind them, business owners today are happy to have the city's attention -- and the palms.

"Anything they've done -- just like the Farmers Market -- it's picked up business," said Jan McWhirter, the owner of a candy and cake decorating supply business on Water Street.

Since the weekly craft and food markets began in 1999, McWhirter's business has picked up by about 10 percent, she said.

McWhirter is well aware that developing downtown is "going to maybe take away some of the small town, but we've got to grow," she said.

Others, like Monograms Magic & More owner Mari-Rene, have a sentimental attachment to "old" Henderson that binds them to the original town-site area.

"I've outgrown my building, but I don't want to leave Water Street," said Mari-Rene. "My store is on Water Street, because I want Henderson to be a focal point."

But as the city continues to gobble up area properties, setting them aside for unidentified future uses, at least one growing operation has been stifled by the city's lock on downtown properties.

Staz's American Motorcycles, one of the few thriving businesses along Water Street, was stymied in its expansion plans by the city's grip on vacant downtown parcels.

To further sour matters between the parties, Steven "Staz" DeStout, owner of the high-dollar, all-domestic motorcycle shop near Water Street and Lake Mead Drive, said that the city had expressed a desire to acquire adjacent property to sell to him, but later backed out of the deal.

The City Council is working on more than doubling the current redevelopment area to stretch from one end of Water Street to the edge of Lake Las Vegas.

A string of major master-planned communities representing about 8,000 new homes are expected to bridge the blighted gap between the townsite and the immaculate resort community of Lake Las Vegas.

Two major projects on Water Street will cap the other end of the redevelopment district: a $56 million City Hall expansion and office / retail complex scheduled to begin its ascension next year.

In the midst of this excited hum is what has fast become redevelopment's cornerstone: a state college planned for Lake Mead and Boulder Highway.

The school was the product of conversations between Mayor Jim Gibson, state Sen. Richard Perkins, former Henderson city manager Bob Campbell and Bartlett in 1998.

"Everything before that was just a dream," Gibson said. Business leaders regularly discussed their fantasies of an artsy downtown district with multitudes of shuffling feet, wallets at the ready.

"That was so general. It was very difficult for us to fill in the blanks," Gibson said.

The college has provided a central vision to redevelopment.

Though the college has been buffeted by questions of funding and necessity, Henderson's inner circle has rallied to the cause.

"Water Street should by nature be turned into a college town," said Fieldman, co-president of Makena Cos., a development and entertainment firm. "The reason this hasn't happened in the past, the city hasn't had any ammunition to offer developers."

The redevelopment zone gives city officials plenty of ammunition. Tax dollars generated within the district are plowed back into the area to attract new projects.

Already the city has committed $58 million to develop the infrastructure for LandWell's master-planned Provenance community.

Another $2.6 million in redevelopment dollars have been approved for Phyllis E. Thompson Cos. for the first phase of Fountain Plaza, a major office/retail project across the street from City Hall on Water Street.

Victor Vincent, executive vice president of Thompson Cos., said three phases of construction are expected to cost the company as much as $100 million and include a four-level parking garage, hotel, expansive park and numerous office towers.

The city's rush to redress its factory roots in the trappings of high society has met with its critics, who defend the townsite -- still free from the sometimes stifling homeowners association rules that blanket most of the rest of the city -- as a piece of history to be protected.

And not everyone agrees that the college will usher in an era of extensive redevelopment for Water Street.

"It might draw resources away from downtown, actually," said a member of the city's community development department, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Las Vegas architect Bob Fielden wrestled with downtown Henderson's redevelopment challenges as part of his doctorate work at the University of Hawaii, and he believes Henderson is doing "all the right things."

But he warned of the delusion that many municipalities fall under when faced with redevelopment: the "dream of wiping the slate clean."

"You have to build with what you have," Fielden said.

Barron, who resigned in 1998 when the city manager shuffled her department's redevelopment responsibilities under community development, said the city's redevelopment vision doesn't really do that.

"They have this vision where everything needs to be big and glorious," Barron said.

But her own experience, in the form of a focus group commissioned by the economic development office shortly before she resigned, suggested people wanted something infinitely more "folksy" than what Thompson Cos. and the city are envisioning.

"That was the perception that I had from the moment I walked into the city," Barron said. "People want a small-town feel. It never seemed an appropriate thing to me to begin wiping out all of the housing."

Despite its many challenges, Henderson's efforts to revive downtown are not unique but reflect a city following a "typical growth pattern" of urban sprawl, said Brad Percell, the city's redevelopment officer.

"It's easier and less expensive to grow outwardly," said Percell. "Then, as you start running out of land that is financially feasible to develop, you start looking at in-fill sites."

Eminent domain

With some of those "in-fill sites" blocked by disheveled houses and shops, the temptation increases to use eminent domain, the ability of a governmental body to acquire private property for a public purpose.

Thompson Cos.' efforts to move the city in that direction failed recently when the company was instructed by the City Council instead to re-enter negotiations in good faith.

Bob Wilson, a principal planner for the city, predicted eminent domain won't be used in the near future.

"It'll be a different council," Wilson said, because the current council members "have made a political commitment" not to use eminent domain.

But there will continue to be challenges to redevelopment in Henderson.

As Fielden sees it: "Anytime there's a pot of money, everyone wants to put their fingers in it."

And no matter what changes time brings, there will be those who lament the passing of what once was.

"I don't know that any of us really likes crowds and the loss of some of the freedoms we have because of growth," said Hal Smith, a former state senator and assemblyman from Henderson.

Smith, whose house adjoins the Black Mountain Golf Course, recalled the struggle to create the links in the 1950s -- how the 18-hole course, approved by the council when it was scribblings on the back of a napkin, was intended to bring "sophistication" to the townsite.

The impetus that drove the creation of that course is still at work in the city's push for downtown redevelopment: a transition that could forever change the valley's perception of this old factory town.

But Smith knows the cost of change and economic renewal: the gradual loss of freedoms for area homeowners and business folk alike, and the dissolution of the townsite itself.

"This isn't like old times," he said. "It's different."