Residents weigh in on Sheep Mountain Parkway

Many in public workshops say proposed roadway is unnecessary

Jill DeStefano, right, reviews a drawing of the preliminary alternative alignments of the Sheep Mountain Parkway with the proposed Ice Age Park in mind. North Las Vegas resident Bob Borgersen and Parsons Brinckerhoff representative Emily Hull listen during a public meeting at the Mountain Crest Community Center, July 9.david becker/VIEW david becker/VIEWAmy Cummings, deputy project manager with Parsons Brinckerhoff, gives a Power Point presentation on the proposed Sheep Mountain Parkway, July 9. Advertisement

A couple of meetings, dubbed the Public Alternatives Development Workshops for the proposed Sheep Mountain Parkway, were held on July 9-10 at the Mountain Crest Community Center, 4701 N. Durango Drive, drawing a varied group of residents from all over the valley looking to get involved in the planning process for a potential east-west roadway.

The proposed parkway would span from the northwest tip of the Las Vegas Beltway to Interstate 15 near the Las Vegas Motor Speedway.

Staff members from Parsons Brinckerhoff, a New York-based development, engineering and construction management firm overseeing the early stages of the transportation project, were present to offer updated information and lead the workshops, which attempted to work with citizens to design the best options for location, alignment, configuration and connection points, among other issues.

Just like at the public scoping meetings that were held in May, many locals turned out to express their support or opposition to the project. While some neighbors consider it an example of progressive planning, others say it's unnecessary to build a highway that runs adjacent to the northern Beltway.

Among them were Lynn Gonzales and Leslie Clausen, residents of Sun City Aliante and members of the Protectors of Tule Springs, an organization dedicated to preserving the Upper Las Vegas Wash as a significant paleontological dig site.

"Where we live is probably a half-mile from the 215. There's a local museum that has a mammoth skeleton that came out of a dig basically behind our house," Gonzales said. "There's a lot going on in this area, and they want to go right through some very valuable land."

Gonzales was not the only neighbor at the July 10 meeting who considered the roadway proposal an example of the overdevelopment of the valley.

"It's business as usual," he said. "We're being told this area will develop whether there's a roadway or not. They're basically saying, 'We're going to pave this whether you like it or not.' It's a power play. I think it's time for business as usual to stop."

Community opinion may vary, but Sheep Mountain Parkway is far from a done deal, according to Nevada Department of Transportation officials and the Parsons Brinckerhoff representatives at the workshops. The process still is in the early stages, which means exploring options through the current Environmental Impact Study conducted by the Transportation Department and Federal Highway Administration in cooperation with the cities of Las Vegas and North Las Vegas and the Regional Transportation Commission.

Input from previous meetings revealed public concerns surround the wash and Tule Springs area and protecting the fossils there, and suggest that developing and widening the northern Beltway and promoting rapid transit systems at existing transportation corridors would be viable options. Alternative alignments weaving around protected desert lands were discussed at the workshops.

"The 215 is a full-blown alternative to building the parkway," Bryan Davis, senior project manager with Parsons Brinckerhoff, said. "It's a misconception that (Sheep Mountain Parkway) is a done deal, but it's also a misconception that if you don't build it, this area is not going to develop."

In the northwest, master-planned communities for thousands of homes are under construction and in development. The central portion of where the parkway may run cuts between Floyd Lamb Park at Tule Springs and the Clark County Shooting Park, also under construction. And the northeast segment weaves around land reserved for a UNLV north campus, as well as the tip of the proposed North 5th Street transit corridor, Nellis Air Force Base and Apex Industrial Park, the latter recently annexed by the city of North Las Vegas and expected to generate 40,000 jobs over the next 20 years, according to Parsons Brinckerhoff representatives.

The Sheep Mountain Parkway could connect all these sites, most of which are being planned or already building, officials say.

"What we're trying to accomplish in these meetings is finding the best potential alignment locations and coordinate with land-use planning, which is critical," Amy Cummings, planner with Parsons Brinckerhoff, said. "We're trying to preserve the right of way so that planning can be done in the future. This land is owned by the BLM (Bureau of Land Management) and will in the future be available for private sale."

Cummings said the next step is to synthesize the findings from the environmental studies with the input from the public and further research the impact of the proposed route and all its alternatives. There will be more public workshops and meetings, but maybe not until next spring, she said.

Gonzales and Clausen are among the residents who will be opposing the project at every turn of the road. "Growth has to stop at some point," Clausen said. "We've seen a lot of it in the 16 years we've lived here, and at this point, I'm against it."

"The real bottom line is their definition of progress is finding an open space and paving over it," Gonzales said. "That is the exact opposite of my definition."