Planners delay vote on Cornerstone project

By Jeremy Twitchell

Thursday, Sept. 18, 2008 | midnight

Developers are taking a third stab at a project near a former gravel pit at Stephanie Street and Wigwam Parkway, within the city's Cornerstone Redevelopment Area.

The Henderson Planning Commission, however, expressed concerns about the project's scope in a public hearing Sept. 11 — especially about potential traffic and the height of two 30-story towers — and delayed a vote until October to give GSG Development time to address those concerns.

GSG has asked the city for permission to build a 40-acre mixed-use project at the northwest corner of Stephanie and Wigwam that would include up to 1,700 residential units and 851,000 square feet of retail, office, hotel and civic space.

GSG is calling the project Park Heights.

"I'm very excited about this project," GSG principal Kenneth Smith said. "I don't think it would be an overstatement for me to say that in my 20-year career, I've never seen a site that was so suited to (mixed-use development) as this site."

The Park Heights proposal is the third for the land since it was declared a redevelopment area in 2001. The city approved an apartment complex in 2004 and a smaller mixed-use project proposed by a different developer in 2006, but neither one was built.

Commissioners worried that the much larger scope of the current proposal would overload traffic patterns in the area.

"We're adding 100 units and 800,000 square feet of retail (compared with the 2006 proposal), and we don't even know if this corner can handle this," Commissioner Craig Burr said.

GSG is working with the city on a traffic study, but GSG representatives said they didn't know when it would be completed. City staff from the Community Development Department told the commissioners that they were comfortable approving the application now, because the city has mechanisms that would require GSG to build traffic improvements or scale the project back if the study finds that area streets couldn't handle the load.

As presented to the Planning Commission, Park Heights would have two 30-story residential towers, a 13-story luxury condominium tower, a 13-story hotel and a 12-story office building. All of those buildings would require waivers to the city's 60-foot height limit for the zone.

Commissioners were undecided about granting such a high waiver, particularly for the 330-foot tall residential towers, and asked GSG to create renderings that would clearly show what the towers would look like if built.

Commissioners said Henderson has never seen a project like this, and they wanted to proceed with caution.

"When I see that kind of height in a residential area, I'm concerned," Commissioner Sam Bateman said. "I think this is a great place to try to start a mixed-use development … but we should be concerned going forward when we're talking about the waivers that are being asked for."

GSG is also requesting a parking waiver, which would reduce the number of required spaces for the project from 6,300 to 5,500. GSG representatives said the mixed-use nature of Park Heights meant that parking would be shared between uses. They said they plan to double the city's landscaping requirement, from 7.3 acres to 14.7 acres, in exchange.

Smith said 5,500 spaces exceeds the mixed-use parking standards used in Clark County and cities throughout the Western United States.

The 14.7 acres of open space are being designed by the Design Workshop, which is the same designer Henderson is using for the Cornerstone Lake Park, which lies immediately west of Park Heights.

As presented in public meetings earlier this year, the park would be 100 acres with a 20-acre lake formed in the former gravel pit in its center. That plan has been approved by the city's Parks and Recreation Board, and the park is in the final planning stage.

Smith said the park figures heavily into the plans for Park Heights, and that GSG wants to create synergy between its project and the city's.

"We think we can make (Park Heights) a gathering place for the city, in conjunction with the park next door," Smith said.

Though commissioners expressed a number of concerns, they said they liked the concept and didn't want to discourage Smith.

"This is new to our area and new to our valley," Commissioner Joe Belingheri said. "I agree with what's been said that we need to proceed with caution, but this is something that I would like to see built. I believe this is the wave of the future."

Jeremy Twitchell can be reached at 990-8928 or [email protected].