By VERNON ROBISON
The Progress
The Mesquite City Council sent two high-density housing developers back to the drawing board during a meeting held on Tuesday, November 22. In both cases, council members expressed strong support for the projects themselves. But each proposal had elements not in keeping with the city code – elements which the council could not justify.
Setbacks for Desert Oasis
The first item, called Desert Oasis Villas, was a 115-unit mutli-family residential complex on a 9.4 acre parcel east of Old Mill Road and north of Mesquite Blvd.
Access to the property would come from a main entrance at Old Mill Road. A secondary access would be available from the parking lot of the Megaplex 6 movie theatre at the southeast corner of the site.
The developer proposes to use prefabricated units for the housing. These will be attached in groupings of one to four units with a proposed overall density of 12.23 units per acre.
The sticking point for the Council came in a 15 foot setback required between the proposed new units and existing homes on the east side of the project’s property line. The developer’s plans showed an encroachment of several feet into that setback by a set of second floor balconies on several of the units.
City planner Dan Catron said that staff was requesting changes to honor that setback. “We are requesting an amended condition here that the upper floor decks be set back a minimum of 15 feet from the eastern property line,” Catron said.
Mesquite mayor Al Litman said that he had met with a homeowners’ group on the east of the project who had asked for that setback.
“That was really their only concern is that there would be enough room to put a row of trees or something there so that they have privacy on the other side,” Litman said. “The setback seemed to satisfy them.”
Representing the developer was Chad Klein who pointed out that the code requires the setback to be measured from the “livable space,” or the foundation of the buildings. Residential buildings can encroach a deck up to ten feet into the setback, he said.
Klein added that the project had been designed with one in every four units encroaching about eight feet into the 15-foot setback. Every other unit would be back further than 15 feet.
“If we have to push the entire row of housing forward by 8 feet, then it will force us to have to redesign the entire site,” Klein said. “And the client will end up losing probably five or six more units.”
Council members expressed enthusiasm about the project. But they couldn’t get past the setback issue.
“I’m really excited and I’d love to see this project happen quickly,” said Councilman Wes Boger. “But I am inclined to go with staff’s recommendation here. I don’t know how we can approve it when it is encroaching into the other houses behind them. It isn’t fair to the people that are already there.”
Wursten asked Klein if it might be better to postpone the item to give time to take the plan back to his client and try to find a solution to the problem.
“Maybe you could at least have your people look at it and see if there is anything they could do to make it work better,” Wursten said. “Because I don’t know that it will fly the way that it is.”
Klein responded that the project had been delayed several times. He felt that city staff had previously given the go-ahead for the reduced setback idea. “This is kind of new to us coming today with this 15 foot,” he said.
Senior City Planner Richard Secrist explained that he had earlier proposed a bit of a compromise: that the foundations of the buildings be set back to a minimum of 20 feet. Then there would be a total of 12 feet from the balcony to the property line.
“I think that is more consistent with the way the city has interpreted setbacks in the past,” Secrist said.
But Klein stated that even that proposal would require a complete redesign of the entire site plan.
Boger repeated that he couldn’t approve the plans as they were. “It’s really a shame because it is something that we definitely need and want in Mesquite,” Boger said. “But it also has to be right.”
Boger made a motion to table the plans until an agreement could be reached on the 15-foot setbacks. The motion was approved with a unanimous vote.
Parking at Prestwick Apts.
The second item which fell short was a proposal to build a 470-unit multi-family housing complex called Prestwick Apartments on Horizon Blvd. just south of Canyon Crest Blvd.
The 18.87 acre site is zoned for Multi-family High Density (MF-4) which allows up to 25 units per acre.
The proposal includes two large 4-story apartment buildings on the west side of the project. On the first floor of one of these buildings would be a 5,000 sq foot restaurant.
Another phase of the development would include 76 townhome units on approximately 6.7 acres on the west end of the parcel. This would bring a more affordable workforce housing angle to the project.
Once again, Council members were pleased with the project and what it would offer to the city. But they found a serious problem in the number of parking spaces being provided in the plans.
The staff reports cited that the project did not meet the minimum parking required by city code. The plans proposed only 674 spaces where 987 spaces should be required, the reports stated. This would be a parking rate of only 1.43 spaces per dwelling unit without any consideration of the restaurant or other uses.
“So right off the bat we are short a third of the parking there,” said Litman.
City staff acknowledged that the townhouse portion of the development had adequate parking both for residents and visitors.
Representing the developer was Erik Swendseid who gave several points of justification for the lower parking rates on the project.
First he proposed, in order to minimized problems, that the restaurant could be restricted to tenants and guests only and not open to the general community.
“Keeping that not open to the general public would significantly lessen the number of parking spaces required,” Swendseid said.
In addition, the project would include a bus path with bus stops along Horizon Blvd for public transit. There would be ample bicycle parking and storage. And the complex would introduce a car share program. All of this would be expected to reduce the number of vehicles needed, and therefore the number of parking spaces required, Swendseid said..
In addition, Swendseid pointed to a trend in many municipalities toward reducing parking requirements in projects of this kind.
“Clark County and the City of Las Vegas parking ordinance requires an average of 1.63 spaces per unit while Mesquite is averaging 1.8,” he said. “That is a difference of almost thirty spaces per apartment building.”
But Council members were not convinced that these measures would prevent a potential parking problem.
“Look, you are not even meeting the 1.63 that the county and Vegas requires,” Boger said. “If you were, I’d be more willing to do something here. But a rural community like this? I don’t think it will work.”
Boger was doubtful on the car sharing idea having any impact at all to solve the problem. “I really don’t think that car sharing is going to be a thing in a rural area like this,” Boger said. “I mean with our demographic and the age of the average person here a bit higher than it is in cities like Las Vegas, I just don’t think that we are there yet.”
Wursten agreed. “This is a project that I really want to see go,” he said. “But I just don’t think that this is a workable number right now. I don’t see any national trend of reducing parking at all. In fact everybody I talk to has a car nowadays. Even in Sun City, most of those residents have two cars per household.”
Councilman George Gault didn’t like the idea of restricting the restaurant from general community use. “If you are going to create a private restaurant in order to solve a parking problem, I’m not sure that is going to work,” Gault said. “If I read the community correctly on this, we would rather have the restaurant open to the public because we are looking for diverse offerings in that arena. So, really, I think you solve the parking problem and make the restaurant public. And I think you’d make a killing on that if you brought in a decent operation. Everyone is happy.”
Wursten suggested that the developer go back to the drawing board to solve the parking issue.
“I would really rather take some time and continue this until you get to a point where we can do this,” Wursten said. “Because I don’t want to lose the project if we can help it.”
Wursten made the motion to continue the matter for the developer to come back with a revised plan. The motion was approved with a unanimous vote.
