MARK WAITE / PVT John Ritter, chief executive officer of Focus Property Group, at left, listens as Mark Fiorentino, Focus Group senior vice-president of government affairs, addresses Nye County Commissioners Sept. 19. Advertisement

John Ritter, chairman and chief executive officer of the Focus Property Group, said he began the company 20 years ago.

"I started the company with $500 and have been lucky enough to have experienced some success," Ritter told Nye County Commissioners during the public hearing over his company's development agreement Sept. 19.

Ritter said he's now the majority owner of Focus Property Group, a company that has 9,000 acres of development under way in Clark County alone, according to a profile on Las Vegas movers and shakers published in Las Vegas Life magazine. Focus also has projects on the board in Victorville, Calif., and Denver, Colo.

The article mentions Ritter tried acting in Los Angeles after college, then started his own landscaping business. Ritter first tried his hand in real estate in Phoenix, Ariz., before moving to Las Vegas to found the company as Focus Commercial Group with Andy Flaherty in 1987.

"There are a lot of markets in Las Vegas that are going to grow," Ritter told Nye County officials. "We look at all those markets, and we picked Pahrump to invest a lot of time and a lot of money in. We probably have enough money to develop here for 15 or 20 years."

Focus Property Group has almost 2,500 acres of property in Pahrump Valley. Besides the 900-acre Gateway Project, Focus bought the Pahrump Dairy and the Desert Trails subdivision in northern Pahrump Valley.

Ritter said he was surprised at the opposition voiced by a number of Pahrump residents to the Gateway project.

"This is really unusual for us. We typically don't get this kind of resistance to our projects," Ritter said during a break in the meeting. But he added, "Those who oppose a project tend to be more vocal than people that support the project."

Ritter told commissioners he hopes the company reflects his personal philosophy, to become a community partner and provide a project that improves the value of the community.

Mountains Edge, the company's signature project on 3,500 acres in the southwestern Las Vegas Valley, was listed as the fastest-selling community in southern Nevada last year, according to the Forbes.com PR newswire, with its 1,000th home closing Jan. 19, after just nine months.

The Focus Property Group Web site touts its water conservation efforts. Ritter said the company has been an industry leader in water conservation in Las Vegas, with Mountain's Edge the first drought tolerant master-planned community.

The availability of water was a major concern among some Pahrump residents who oppose the development agreement.

The reports of a slack housing market may affect the development of the Gateway Project in Pahrump, Ritter said during an interview. "The housing market has slowed in Las Vegas and nationally. It's a temporary situation. What's nice about this project, it's not going to be selling houses until 2009, and certainly the real estate market will be recovering by that time," Ritter said.

Ritter's father, a Fulbright scholar who worked in New York City, died when he was 12, according to the biography published in Las Vegas Life. He described going to acting auditions and being treated like cattle, after which he got into the landscaping business to be his own boss. He then decided he didn't want to spend the next 30 years of his life getting up at 5 a.m., dealing with trucks and crews.

When he met Flaherty in the 1980s, Ritter heard about the hot real estate market in Las Vegas.

Ritter said he feels if a company prospers in a community, it is obligated to give something back, a practice he said his company has done in Las Vegas.

"Development is going to come to Pahrump, and I hope to be involved in that development, and I hope the development that comes to Pahrump is well thought out and well planned," Ritter told commissioners.

"We have a vision for our communities. We like communities that provide a high quality of life to the residents. We don't build golf course communities, we don't build custom home communities, our communities don't have mansions. We build what I call primary home communities. Those are homes that serve the teachers, the policeman, the fireman and frankly, the common working man. I didn't start out as a wealthy guy."

Commissioner Patricia Cox asked whether Focus Property Group could hire local contractors to help them increase their business and help them go through the bidding process, "so we have a work force here instead of over the hill."

Ritter was receptive to that suggestion.

"It would help us because our construction costs on this project will be higher than Las Vegas," Ritter said, "we can hire contractors who don't have to add to their costs the cost of driving from Las Vegas. We certainly would be willing to meet with any contractors that would be willing to work on the project and walk them through our qualification process."

Ritter also responded to concerns among residents that new development may alter the traditional rural lifestyle here.

"Pahrump can be a really good mix, with the existing rural development, which I think needs to be protected. I live in a rural area of Las Vegas with minimum half-acre lots," Ritter said in an aside during the meeting.

But he said Pahrump has an unusual type of development, with two types of housing, either custom-built type homes or dense development of manufactured homes.

"Pahrump does have that separation from Las Vegas it will always have which is nice. People will continue to come out to Pahrump for that small town atmosphere," he said. "Ultimately water will limit the growth in Pahrump. Pahrump will never be a big, crowded city. There isn't enough water for that."