Tuesday, June 8, 2004 | 11:40 a.m.
Developer Rhodes Homes and the Clark County School District have tentatively agreed on a site for a new elementary school near Rhodes Ranch, a selection that could end years of wrangling and a county ban on new residential construction in the development.
Rhodes Ranch was once slated to be an age-restricted community where schools would not be needed. In 1998, the developer changed strategies, opening up the area to families with children.
Representatives of the Clark County School District, Clark County planners and the developer have since disagreed about where to put new schools for the children.
Clark County Commissioner Lynette Boggs McDonald said she will block any new home-building permits for the development until the school district, county and developer have a "signed, sealed, delivered" agreement to establish the school.
According to county records, Rhodes Ranch in the southwest Las Vegas Valley is now home to about 4,800 homes, and the developer asks for 100 new building permits each month. The project, slated for 9,000 homes at build-out, is a centerpiece of Rhodes Homes, a company owned by well-connected Las Vegas businessman Jim Rhodes.
In the development agreement that allowed Rhodes Ranch to be built, the county required the developer to provide a site for a school if the community included children. The school district relinquished three potential school sites within Rhodes Ranch when the community was planned as age-restricted, she said.
"Now we need a school site again," Boggs McDonald said. "I've never seen an instance where a developer was so delinquent in providing a school site."
The proposed site at the corner of Ford Avenue and Grand Canyon Drive still has one potential stumbling block: It is not now served by the water district.
"A site has been identified but it has not been fully signed off on by the Las Vegas Valley Water District," Boggs McDonald said.
J.C. Davis, a spokesman for the water district, said his agency has some potential problems with the site.
"The location is in fact problematic from a delivery point of view," Davis said. While Rhodes Homes could build a pump station to bring water to the site, the water district usually wants multiple potential pump sources for a school or residential development.
"We would be serving a school without any backup ability," he said. "We are only comfortable when we have a degree of reliability. To provide service to this one specific island with no backup supply is a problem with us."
Dean Walker, vice president of business development for Rhodes Homes, said he believed the technical issue can be resolved. The company and officials from the water district are scheduled to meet Wednesday to discuss the issue.
"We've been working on this issue for a long, long time," said Dean Walker, vice president of business development for Rhodes Homes. "We've agreed to bring in all the infrastructure including the water to the site."
He called the site immediately west of Rhodes Ranch "far superior to any other site." The federal Bureau of Land Management now controls the land, and the agency normally turns over the property to local agencies for such needs as schools.
Dusty Dickens, school district zoning and demographics director, said the site works for the district if the water issue can be resolved.
"If he (Rhodes) does everything he says he will do, including getting the utilities in quickly, then it works for us," she said. "Our position has always been we're not in the position to be punitive, and I don't think the county is either, but there is a demand coming from Rhodes Ranch that we did not anticipate because it was supposed to be age-restricted."
Boggs McDonald said the ban on new-building permits will remain if the site does not pan out.
"Developers are going to be held accountable to deliverables and the dates they say they will deliver them," she said, adding, "I'm cautiously optimistic that the site is suitable."
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