The ground-breaking of the Clark County Shooting Park at the base of Sheep Mountain in the utter northwest region of the Las Vegas Valley in October 2006 was a grand event, out in the middle of the desert. Not just because it was attended by dignitaries representing every level of government, but also because the moment represented their collaborative effort, a quarter century in the works, to make Las Vegas home of the world’s largest shooting park. Yet the 2,900-acre, $61 million project did not ignite much public debate.
In fact, the Las Vegas Weekly noted this with a headline following the ceremony that read: “$61 million to fire a gun—and nobody has any questions?” The problem, it turns out, was that the park’s nearest neighbors were completely unaware of the park at the time.
It had been conceived in the ’80s, planned in the ’90s, secured, discussed, voted on and approved at the turn of the millennium, two years before the Carmel Canyon community of homes was built, in the fashion of a peninsula, at the very northwest end of Jones Boulevard, a mere half-mile from the shooting park. When pilgrims from all over the country moved into Carmel Canyon, no one—neither the three municipalities that surround the area nor Lennar, the home-builder—notified them of the grandiose shooting park ready to be erected next door.
It wasn’t until last month, when they read an article about the park and its projected 2009 opening in a neighborhood newspaper, that the residents came to learn of the project.
How could this be?
The Carmel Canyon residents—cops, nurses, businessmen among them—were flabbergasted when the news spread at the January 23 homeowners association meeting, the HOA president says. Theresa Nolan was one of them. In March 2006, she had moved from a small town in Connecticut into her “dream home” on the fringe of Carmel Canyon, nearest the forthcoming park, and yet Lennar, she says, had never disclosed to her the obvious information.
Before signing the home-seller’s disclosure packet, which makes no specific mention of the renowned shooting park, Nolan says she specifically asked her Lennar representative about the barren land next door. “They told me that there might be an equestrian park built there, but it looked like the plan had been dismissed. They said absolutely nothing about a shooting park.”
She’s not the only one. The disclosure packets offered to the residents in the Carmel Canyon community, an L-shaped formation comprised of roughly 200 homes, notified them only that the nearby land was zoned for civic use—such as, according to the document, “parks, schools, public facilities.”
Lorraine Lennard, who had moved to Carmel Canyon from New Jersey, says, “When
I saw ‘parks’ I considered what most people would think, children and playgrounds. I didn’t consider the world’s largest shooting park.”
A real-estate broker, Lennard did, call the county prior to moving in 2006, to cover all bases. “They told me nothing,” she says. “They said there might be a water-treatment facility, and that’s all.”
The Carmel Canyon homeowners are, of course, irate. They worry about the potential problems associated with living next door to a shooting park of unprecedented size. The two vital issues are noise and home-value depreciation.
Carmel Canyon stands roughly one mile away from the park’s shotgun range.
The shooting park plans to be open 15 hours a day, seven days a week.
Residents say they anticipate a 5-25 percent drop in the value of their homes.
The shooting park’s manager, Don Turner, says he can understand the homeowners’ concerns.
“But I think their worries are based more on perception than reality,” he says. “They don’t know what to expect, and that’s why they fear.”
Turner is the foremost expert in shooting parks and all matters (even scientific and political) related to them. He will draw off his experience as head of the Ben Avery Shooting Park, currently the nation’s largest, with several parallels to Clark County’s, and his expertise as a researcher in shooting parks, to mollify the Carmel Canyon residents’ worries on February 13, when he speaks at their emergency homeowners meeting at the Aliante library.
Regardless, Gina Falkowitz, president of the Carmel Canyon HOA, says that’s information she and her neighbors should have been exposed to when deciding whether or not to purchase their homes, almost all of which exceed $500,000.
“With regard to my personal feelings,” says Falkowitz, “I would have never purchased a home in Carmel Canyon had I been aware of the shooting park.”
Many of her neighbors concur.
Now, it appears, there is little they can do.
“At this point,” says Blanca Vazquez, a Clark County community liaison working with the Carmel Canyon folks, “I don’t know how much difference they can make, because everything has already been approved.”
Vazquez says that Carmel Canyon, like all the residential development in that region, was not anticipated when the land was first designated for the shooting park in the ’80s and ’90s.
The county is quick to point out that even though the majority of the public discourse took place prior to 2004, the park has been a topic of discussion in no fewer than eight County Commission meetings during the past two years. Moreover, Vazquez states, there is a deluxe web page on the county’s site dedicated to the park, and there are online newsletters distributed monthly to update interested citizens.
Which is true. But all those things must be sought out, and how are people to seek out something of which they have not been made aware?
For instance, in 2005, before the County Commissioners voted on a zoning change related to the park’s development, the county, according to Turner, noticed the area’s residents pursuant to county requirements. Yet, somehow, none of the residents in Carmel Canyon was informed, they say.
“We get notices from the county for everything under the sun,” says Nolan, “from rezoning to highway development, but we didn’t get anything about the shooting park.”
Turner says he was told by Development Services at the time that all nearby residents had been noticed.
Leonard Cash, director of the county’s parks and recreation department, says that it is a coordinated effort between several departments to inform residents of what is transforming within their neighborhoods.
This, perhaps, is where a mix-up occurred.
In any event, by the time the Carmel Canyon residents moved into their homes, starting in August 2004, the project was already in motion. Championed by a wave of county, state and federal politicians, and encouraged by a sea of registered gun owners, the park already carried with it too much momentum to stop, or to even push back. And thus, the question arises:
Why didn’t the home-seller, Lennar, tell the prospective buyers about the massive project?
Calls made to Lennar’s corporate office were not returned; attempts to contact Lennar’s regional office and its Carmel Canyon representatives were unsuccessful.
Of course, buyers, when purchasing a home, have a responsibility to practice due diligence, according to the law. Lorraine Lennard’s husband, Richard, says he knows all about due diligence, having been a real-estate broker, like his wife, in New Jersey. He says he’s confident that he and his wife did their part before purchasing their home in May 2005, including phone calls made to the county’s office.
Lennard says that after he learned about the park three weeks ago, he set upon the task of informing his neighbors, and that in talking to them he ard a few other stories.
“People around here say they were told the land couldn’t be developed because it was a wildlife habitat for endangered species, some were told it was horse country,” Lennard says. “I have neighbors who’ve put $50,000 in their back yards and now they are up in arms. Some have already started talking to lawyers.”
While disclosure laws vary state to state, Nevada statute says sellers have a duty to disclose any material fact that might be relevant to someone’s decision to buy a home.
Moreover, NRS 113.070 states: “Before the initial purchaser of a residence of a residence signs a sales agreement or opens escrow, whichever occurs earlier, the seller shall, by separate written document, disclose to the initial purchaser the zoning classifications and the designations in the master plan regarding land use.” Whereas designations refers to “land uses that the governing city or county proposes for a parcel of land.”
In this case it appears, according to disclosure documents kept by the Carmel Canyon homeowners, that Lennar disclosed the zoning classifications but not the master-planned designations.
HOA president Falkowitz says, “If I were to sell my property tomorrow, I would be required to disclose the shooting park. If I am required to disclose, why should Lennar be exempt?”
Falkowitz says the association has been consulting with “a handful of attorneys.”
County Parks and Recreation Director Cash says that, in the end, “this appears to be a buyer-seller issue.”
Indeed it does. Yet, as community liaison Vazquez states, the same governmental body that approved the shooting park’s location—County Commissioners—also approved Lennar’s request to build homes a mere half-mile from the park’s boundaries.
Don Turner, the man to whom county officials defer all such related questions, says he was not engaged in any discussions about the proximity of those homes prior to approval.
Lennar is one of the county’s largest taxpayers, according to the Clark County Assessor’s office.
Both Turner and Cash say that the park’s master plan—which was finalized in 2003, about the same time Lennar sought approval to develop in the area—indicates that residential development had been anticipated where Carmel Canyon now stands.