Friday, June 30, 2006 | 7:35 a.m.
The flood of high-rise plans that swept through the Strip and downtown Las Vegas is seeping into the city's outskirts, presenting thousands of homeowners with the prospect of traffic jams and neighbors towering above them.
The latest suburban high-rise proposal comes attached to plans for the Great Mall of Las Vegas - a long-discussed project from Triple Five, the developers behind Boca Park in Summerlin, the Mall of America in Minneapolis, and the largest mall in the world, the West Edmonton Mall in Canada.
Neighbors knew the megamall was coming but became alarmed in February when they first saw that a Triple Five subsidiary, Triple Five Nevada Development Corp., wanted condominium-filled high-rises around the Great Mall of Las Vegas. The proposal brings Triple Five into the mix of developers hoping to cash in on the Las Vegas high-rise condominium craze that promises to keep builders busy for years.
This isn't the first high-rise proposal for this area near the northwest crossing of U.S. 95 and the Las Vegas Beltway. The city outlined a vision for dense, tall development around that highway interchange in the late '90s - a plan that allows buildings up to 500 feet tall in certain areas, including on half of Triple Five's 50-acre mall site.
However, Triple Five wants to change the zoning to allow two 250-foot-tall condominium towers on a part of the property that now carries a two-story height limit and that doesn't allow residences. A company official said the layout was influenced by a desire to help traffic flow by keeping condo residents and mall patrons on different roads.
Some neighbors say the City Council shouldn't give in to Triple Five's proposal, which they say would overwhelm their neighborhood with traffic and would give prying eyes a chance to look into their back yards.
"It seems that Triple Five purchased the property knowing the zoning and this is a little bit bigger than two stories," said Vicki Driscoll, a resident of the Timberlake subdivision just south of the mall site who fears a loss of privacy to future condo neighbors.
"If they're on the top floors, they can just get a telescope, and we'll have no privacy. We had a reasonable expectation of privacy. We didn't plan on people watching us in our pools."
Brian Gordon of Applied Analysis, a real estate and business advisory firm, said the suburban high rises are a direct result of growth driving up land prices throughout the Las Vegas Valley. As the population expands away from the center of the city, "pockets of dense commercial development" are to be expected, he said.
Whether people support or oppose dense, high-rise development is often determined by whether they are more influenced by aesthetics or the potential economic benefit of a project, Gordon said.
Debra March, executive director of UNLV's Lied Institute for Real Estate Studies, also said the clusters of dense development are to be expected in such a rapidly growing area.
"That's why you see zoning changed all the time," March said. "But thank God it isn't changed at the drop of a hat and we can challenge and question the proposed changes."
March, who is also a member of the Henderson Planning Commission, said it still "behooves the city to concentrate high-rise development in downtown," where such development is more expected and generally accepted by those already living there. Also, while much high-rise development has been approved for downtown Las Vegas, relatively little is under construction.
But while comments from city officials and council members seem to indicate Triple Five won't be allowed to go as tall as it now proposes, city leaders seem to generally support a tall and dense development at the site.
The city Planning Commission is recommending the City Council reject the tall proposal when it goes before them on July 12. And Councilman Steve Ross, whose ward includes the mall site, is reportedly unwilling to support the 250-foot towers but might agree to something shorter.
Ross was unavailable for comment for this story because of a death in his family. But his city liaison, Sheila Lambert, said the councilman supports the mall project and the idea of having condominiums there too, even though she said he is "unlikely to support two 250-foot towers."
Councilman Steve Wolfson, whose ward includes most of Summerlin, wouldn't comment on the Great Mall proposal specifically. But Wolfson said the increasing number of proposed high rises away from downtown "is a natural extension of what's happening in the internal part of the city - the need to go vertical because of the land prices."
Wolfson has also been forced to deal with high rises coming to his community - most notably the under-construction One Queensridge Place condominiums. And he is in the midst of negotiations between Triple Five and residents for another potential high-rise project near Rampart and Alta drives .
Councilman Larry Brown now represents some northern parts of Summerlin and precincts north of Cheyenne Avenue, but until the expansion of the council in 1999, Brown's ward included the entire northwest. And although he wouldn't speak about the Great Mall proposal specifically, Brown said that in general a tall and dense development near the highway interchanges "certainly fits into what was envisioned" for that area.
Also, as Triple Five representatives have noted, theirs would not be the first tall building OK'd for the area. A year ago the council approved plans for two 24-story towers roughly a half-mile west of the proposed mall.
Attorney Bob Gronauer represented the Deer Springs Investments project, which won approval for the two office and residential towers planned for land across from a new hospital at Durango Drive and Deer Springs Way. Gronauer said Triple Five's proposal fits in with the city's long-range plan for higher-density developments in that area, and others said the high-rises are an expected by-product of higher land prices, and the city's rapid growth.
And not all the neighbors are opposed to the project.
Mark Schwartz, the secretary and treasurer of the Timberlake association, said his group has formally supported the mall project and the towers, which would be on the far side of the property from the hundreds of Timberlake homes, where most of the opposition resides.
"They're at the far end of the property and not really going to bother me," Schwartz said. "But we're a very divided subdivision on this. Some people don't want any towers back there."
James Grindstaff, Triple Five's local vice president of planning and development, said in addition to the distance from the homes on the south, there would also be an earth berm and 10- to 20-foot trees between the mall property and the homes.
"Plus the mall itself will obscure the view," he said.
The mall would have about 1.2 million square feet of retail space on three floors, which would make it a little larger than the Meadows mall and about the same size as the Boulevard mall. There would be 900 condominiums on the property, with 48 in two rows of six-story loft/retail buildings that would resemble the District at Green Valley Ranch. The rest of the condominiums would be in the two 250-foot towers, which would include 15 floors of condominiums on top of parking garages.
Under a best-case scenario, mall construction would begin late next year and the mall would open in late 2009. The proposed high rises would follow two or three years later.
Triple Five has been seen as a political force in the past. Since 1998, the company and its affiliates have contributed at least $153,000 to Southern Nevada politicians, and in 2000 the company secured Clark County approval for a casino in the Spring Valley township of southwest Las Vegas - although that was later voided by a state panel.
Former County Commissioner Erin Kenny has testified that Triple Five paid her $3,000 a month for three years after she supported the Spring Valley casino.
Triple Five officials have denied any illicit deals with Kenny.
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