MARK WAITE / PVTWalt Kuver looks at the maps on display at the Bob Ruud Community Center Wednesday night that already show a lot of areas on major Pahrump thoroughfares colored in under zones proposed by Hogle Ireland consultants. Advertisement

Property owners appealed to Hogle Ireland consultants to zone their land for commercial development, but the Irvine, Calif.-based firm seems to favor residential zoning.

Hogle Ireland was given a specific task to iron out problems in the mixed-use zone envisioned in the Pahrump 2004 master plan. It's sort of a catch-all zone that encompasses about 12 percent of the area of the Pahrump zoning district.

Hogle Ireland is also doing the comprehensive zoning review for the entire Pahrump Regional Planning District, in which hard zoning will be placed on over 40,000 parcels. Senior Project Manager Kathy Lottes said that review will be presented at a community meeting in March, after which it will be forwarded to the commission for approval.

Consultants told prospective commercial developers, who submitted numerous comments at a Pahrump Regional Planning Commission workshop Wednesday, that their streets were identified in the capital improvement plan as minor arterials, not major thoroughfares, and neighboring properties were residential.

When Robert Zegerra, associate planner, told one property owner on Mesquite Avenue his property was recommended for residential estates zoning, a few sneers came from some real estate agents listening to the presentation.

That led Cheryl Beeman, interim Nye County planning director, to remark, "if you have comments, you'll have to address them instead of heckling from the back of the room."

Paul Benedict wrote that he purchased property with the intent of developing it for neighborhood commercial, under the impression Gamebird Road would be a major thoroughfare. Instead, he was told by planners the county capital improvement plan identified Gamebird Road as a "minor arterial."

Wolfgang Lettow, who applied for zone changes in October on property along Gregory Street, spoke about the rural homestead zone in which his property would have a minimum 4.5-acre lot size.

"Four and a half acres for just one house does not seem to be the wisest and best investment for me," Lettow said.

Zegerra said their recommendations were based on field surveys, existing land uses, emerging land use patterns, lot sizes, subdivision properties, the capital improvement plan and community feedback.

"Any properties that have already been approved for a zone change by Nye County have not been changed. Those will remain as they have already been zoned," Zegerra said.

A property owner on Mesquite Avenue wanted properties from Barney Street to Highway 160 zoned for mixed use.

"On the Pahrump capital improvement plan, Mesquite Avenue hasn't been identified for future improvements at this point," Zegerra said.

But the Nye County Commission liaison to the RPC, Butch Borasky, told Hogle Ireland's consultants, "I think you're communicating some misinformation. Mesquite Avenue is a very heavily traveled road. Homestead is a very heavily traveled road. Gamebird is a very heavily traveled road. You may want to get more information on those roads. That's very critical to what you're doing here. That's your high-traffic roads we're talking about, not just your feeder roads."

Pahrump Town Board liaison Laurayne Murray said Homestead Road is going to have heavy traffic, particularly with major developments like Concordia Homes of Southern Nevada, 833 residential lots, and Beazer Homes, with another 586. "By making it RH (Rural Homestead) 4.5 they can't go anywhere with it," she said.

Murray said Gamebird Road would lead to the proposed beltway around Pahrump and the airport in the future.

Zegerra said some properties were zoned for 4.5-acre minimum lots to reduce the possibility of a subdivision.

He said the area around the Calvada Meadows airport is envisioned as residential.

Lottes said the planners will return Feb. 28. People can submit comments on their Web site, www.pahrumpzoning.com.

"You can imagine the work is fairly complex in terms of doing the analysis and making recommendations on the zoning for about 45,000 properties, which is what we're looking at for the district," Lottes said.

The master plan passed in 2004 was a more generalized look at the Pahrump Regional Planning District, she said.

"It's the fundamental step for the community. It sets out your conceptual vision for growth for the next 20 years or so, but it's a very general vision. It's not specific like zoning," Lottes said.