Planned growth, controlled growth, smart growth, managed growth, growth restraints, growth control, growth caps, growth boundaries, no-growth — it all comes down to the same thing: What on earth do we do with the thousands of people moving into Nevada every month? Do we close off our borders and install armed guards to keep out Californians? Or do we open the state wide and give everyone 40 acres and a mule? If you live in Southern Nevada, you might vote for the former. If you live in Central Nevada, the latter. But many around the state, especially those in Nevada’s two urban centers, are searching for a middle ground.
Growth needs to be balanced with infrastructure. Nevada is a desert — there are water issues. Construction, cars and environment have led to serious air quality concerns. Traffic is getting noticeably worse. Schools are juggling funds, teachers, facilities and students to rival any three-ring circus. Housing costs are rising.
On the other hand, personal income is on the rise. Our economy is maturing and experiencing a glimmer of long sought after diversity. People are moving here for retirement, or for jobs, and the powers-that-be are trying their best to attract more of both.
Is growth a four-letter word?
There will always be people who think that anytime they see construction, it means an area is growing too fast. Conversely, there will always be those who complain of growth being too slow. “It’s a matter of perspective,” says Chuck Alvey, president and COO of the Economic Development Authority of Western Nevada (EDAWN) in Reno. More adamant is Somer Hollingsworth, president/CEO of the Nevada Development Authority (NDA) in Las Vegas. “Growth is a good word,” he says amicably. “When you stop growing, you start to die.” Stephen Bottfeld of Las Vegas-based Marketing Solutions, a home-builder research firm, sums it up with, “There’s no such thing as good growth or bad growth. Growth is inevitable.” But planning can be good or bad and is not quite the foregone conclusion that some might assume.
Frank Brock, president of Brock and Weigl Construction Inc. in Reno, argues for quality growth. He is in favor of regulations that demand quality, rather than limiting growth based on area “Construction here provides a good quality of life,” he says. “Not every rule is going to work. We need leeway, but I don’t want to see the area raped and pillaged by crummy development.” Which, according to Kirsten Cannon, public information specialist for the Nevada State Contractors’ Board, is exactly what the state is trying to avoid.
Richard Lee, director of public relations for First American Title in Las Vegas, says, “Controlled growth scares people, unlimited growth scares people, so ‘smart growth’ is the new buzz term.” Though no one seems to agree on an exact definition of smart growth, it is usually characterized by a balance among allowing for growth, maintaining quality of life and not overloading infrastructure. “Smart growth,” says Dina Titus, a state senator from Las Vegas, “means you grow at a pace that you can keep up with, in terms of infrastructure, but also in terms of sustainable communities. It requires using natural resources to their maximum advantage so the next generation has them as well.”
Affordable housing
Mark Doppe, president of Las Vegas based Carina Corporation, wants growth to be seen in terms of people, not buildings. The state promotes job growth and people come here for the jobs. But they have to live somewhere. “There’s a limited amount of vacant land left in the Las Vegas Valley,” he says. “Some time in the not too distant future, we’ll be spilling out of the valley.” The prices of homes are already going up, and many argue that by limiting growth, prices will increase so much that many buyers attracted by the level of pay being offered will be priced out of the housing market. “We are already seeing a lot of pressure on the bottom end right now,” Doppe warns. “When government tries to regulate land availability, they will mess with prices in ways they can’t imagine.” We don’t want to be another Portland.
The threat of becoming another Portland looms high over many conversations regarding growth. A well-publicized October 1999 study by the Reason Public Policy Institute found constraints on land supply in Portland, Ore, have sent housing prices skyrocketing, with Portland’s inner city experiencing the steepest increase. The report estimated that rising housing costs pushed as many as 80,0000 single-family homes out of reach of working families in the Portland area.
Impact fees
Rich Priesing, president of the Southern Nevada Home Builder’s Association (SNHBA) in Las Vegas, defines impact fees as “when government agencies charge fees to builders or developers to provide some kind of social service or infrastructural need.” Priesing supports state-mandated fees, rather than those implemented by cities or counties, because the state requires capital improvement studies to determine the needs, the costs of meeting those needs and the true impact of all types of development. Armed with the results of these studies, the state can then equitably distribute costs of the local impact among residential and commercial developers. “Under the current system, city and county government officials try to get home builders to pay for everything,” he says.
Priesing says the public doesn’t understand the full extent of infrastructure development that residential builders provide. “We build streetlights and sidewalks adjacent to developments,” he says. “Saw-toothing — the phenomenon of haphazard thoroughfare construction — occurs because the land owner, not the county, is ultimately responsible for developing roads. We also build flood control measures, rights-of-way, bridges and smaller streets — all of which are used by the public, not just the members of that specific community.”
Dan Van Epp, president of The Howard Hughes Corporation, says the plus side of impact fees is that they ensure growth pays for itself. The negative side is the in-crease in housing costs — costs that are passed on to the home buyer “Keeping impact fees at a reasonable level, while at the same time allowing the overall population to share in some of these costs is sensible,” Van Epp notes. Hollingsworth adds that the only way for building fees to control growth is to price buyers out of the market. Again looms the threat of Portland.
Limiting factors
The real limiting factors to growth have little to do with politics or opinions. Serious threats to the continued growth of the urban cores of the state, especially Las Vegas, are often more subtle. One of the factors Lee points out is the cost of housing in relation to wages. “Gaming is going to have to get more involved in the affordable housing issue,” he says. “As soon as the houses start getting more and more expensive, gaming employers are going to have to pay their employees a lot more money.” He fears the industry won’t in-crease wages, and will ultimately be populated by under-qualified employees, because the qualified, dependable workers will find jobs in other industries — those that will enable them to buy a home. Right now, the resort industry can hire great employees who can still afford to buy a home. “If that changes,” Lee warns, “it changes the mix of the whole product.”
Doppe notes a general recognition that the natural environment needs preservation and that open space is important. “Twenty years ago, we didn’t pay enough attention to it, and now it needs to be addressed,” he says. Most planned developments now include open space requirements that are more expansive than those of the past. Older areas are still without parks, he says, but no one wanted to pay for them then. Now the public is complaining of the lack.
Quality education is another issue in sharp focus, but the system is severely challenged. Jeff Van Ee, a Las Vegas environmentalist, warns that people who want a good education for themselves or their children may opt to go elsewhere. Brock, in Reno, is concerned as well. “To maintain our quality of life,” he says, “schools should continue to be a priority.” Both he and Alvey agree that education is one of the attributes many companies consider when debating relocation. Like the other limiting factors, education contributes to a diverse economic base.
Environmental factors also play a role in limiting growth. Water has always been a problem — we live in a desert. It’s a simple truth. Neither EDAWN nor the NDA recruit high water-use companies; neither do they plan to. Las Vegas has been aggressive in its pursuit of water rights, and most people in the know feel comfortable with the water issue, though conservation is still a familiar word. Conservation in Reno is nigh on a religion. Want to get in bad with the neighbors? Water on the wrong day.
Air quality is a traditional problem for valleys such as those cradling both Reno and Las Vegas. Reno seems to have its standard back in the acceptable range, though brown skies are still evident on many days throughout the year. But Las Vegas is facing serious governmental problems due to poor air quality. Titus explains that air quality is tied to growth in two ways — emissions from automobiles taking more and longer trips as people move farther and farther out of town, and particulate matter (dust) from active construction and vacant land left behind as construction moves elsewhere. Dennis Smith, owner/CEO of Home Builders Research, Inc. in Las Vegas, warns that as the EPA declares the Las Vegas Valley to be in non-attainment in terms of air quality, the money for roads can dry up. Builders in Las Vegas are already working toward dust control through increased permit fees and increased use of water trucks, hoping their proactive approach will help keep the EPA from cutting funding for roads, but also for more fundamental reasons. “It’s not like home builders are against it,” Smith notes. “They have kids and families who live here too.” And Hollingsworth brings the skies back to earth — “All the environmental pluses that brought people here,” he says, “can just as easily turn them away as the quality decreases.”
Van Ee says one of the problems with air quality is that so many people are involved in Southern Nevada in making air pollution decisions that nothing seems to get done. “That organizational structure needs to be streamlined,” he says. “We need to be providing less restrictive regulations to people on how to deal with air pollution problems. We need to be providing financial incentives and disincentives to people in the free market system to make the right decisions.”
Why discussions stall
The debate is an emotional one. People move here, at least in part, for the environment, the climate and a quality of life that allows for personal freedom as well as personal income. They want to tell the world how wonderful the state is, convince them to come and visit. But they don’t necessarily want to share. Some of the emotions run along the lines of “I got mine.” Others are NIMBY-driven. Still others are whiners from states with high taxes who want the same level of service and infrastructure as they had in another state without paying those same taxes here. “People bring political feelings with them when they move,” Lee says. “There are lots of different opinions to bear in mind.” Hollingsworth mirrors this sentiment with wry humor: “One of the reasons discussions don’t go smoothly is because they involve people. But differences of opinion make the world go round.”
The media itself can be used to sway opinions. Sound bites don’t help in a city moving at the speed of light. “All they know,” says Lee of many of his Las Vegas cohorts, “is that someone says if you limit growth, you won’t have to wait as long in traffic.” In many cases the issues are oversimplified, or the voices of a few drown out those of the many. Alvey quotes Reno’s Mayor Jeff Griffin as saying that all it takes to kill a proposal is a small handful of people. “I think our appointed and elected officials have a mistaken concept that agreement requires unanimity,” says Alvey. “A vocal few make the noise. So business needs to become vocal and say, ‘We support this’ and ‘We want that.’”
Communication and coordination are two other factors that seem to muddy the discussion. There is a lot of talk about coming together and win-win situations and increasing dialog, but the process involves not only private groups who don’t agree, but myriad governmental agencies that can’t find consensus either Titus points out that the general public is more extreme than the experts — they talk of growth caps. But voter turnout remains low. In addition, Titus points to a state Legislature that is “unwilling to step into what has traditionally been a local issue.” Add to that local political officials closely tied to the growth industry – such as gaming and development — and the complexity of the problem becomes apparent.
However, the consensus believes a vi-able solution is within reach. Alicia Reban, executive director of the Nevada Land Conservancy in Reno, a sort of homegrown land trust working with private and public parties to preserve areas that make the state special, says, “I think people generally, on so many issues, tend to be polarized. And there is such a large middle ground upon which we can meet and work together” Open space, for example, makes good economic sense (Summerlin, with its emphasis on huge expanses of open space, has posted record sales several years running). “You can accomplish everyone’s goals if you’ll just be open to the discussion, to the possibility that we can all agree,” states Reban.
Van Ee is not quite as hopeful. “Many people are skeptical as to whether long-range plans will be adhered to,” he says. “It’s hard for people to look 20 years down the road, when they’re trying to get down the road themselves on an overcrowded expressway.”
The future
Many Nevadans are looking for certainty, for a plan to follow. Doppe says builders prefer planning, master plans, capital improvement, funding mechanisms and the like. “We’re not opposed to those,” he says. Alvey says he likes to be able to tell potential relocators what’s available and where things stand. Smith vows the market works well if left alone and that supply and demand will take care of growth. Lee points out that Las Vegas continues to vote to tax itself for roads, schools and parks, as officials and residents alike plan for the future.
Titus sees managed growth as an important step for ensuring the future of the state, even when growth slows. “When it does start to slow, managed growth allows a plan so you aren’t left with a mess,” she says. She supports regional planning, master planning and zoning variances.
Van Ee says we’d be making progress if we even got to the point of planned growth. “We often look at portions of planned growth problems,” he says, “but to really look at everything together, to say whether the communities we are developing will be where we want to live in the future, that’s a bit more difficult for people to get their arms around.” He poses the question as to whether or not there is enough time to address problems now that everyone recognizes them.
In the end, optimism echoes through the conversations. “Nevadans are very much a can-do people,” observes Van Ee. “We built a resort destination out of the desert that is unrivaled in the world. We have this energy and spirit that could possibly turn things around.” Hollingsworth says the Las Vegas area does a better job of handing growth than anywhere else in the country. “We are very critical of ourselves,” he says. “We are so aware of our past and our future that we are always making sure, always trying to do better than the last guy and the next guy.”
Yet there is still that matter of perspective. While the leaders of Reno and Las Vegas argue about how to best handle the enormous wealth of people, creativity, jobs and cash pouring into their cities, the rural counties are scrambling to attract their own jobs, people and tax base. They want growth, some at any cost. You won’t find a debate about smart growth versus responsible growth in a Lincoln County bar. “The problems with growth in the urban centers sometimes dwarf the problems and concerns people have in the rest of the state,” notes Van Ee. Like a starving man watching a rich man worry about his weight, some rural counties look at Las Vegas and Reno and the hoopla about growth and just shake their collective heads.
