A federal detention center won't affect residential sales in the area near the StageStop Casino, Lennard Grodzinsky said Thursday.

A managing member of PIV LLC , developers of the Pechstein Ranch project, was objecting to statements made by attorney Nancy Lord before the Pahrump Regional Planning Commission.

Grodzinsky opposed plans to rezone 20 parcels from open use to a mixed use designation that were left out of the Pahrump comprehensive zoning map approved in June 2007. The RPC denied the request and rezoned the properties residential.

It also turned down a request to rezone a 2.1-acre parcel at 280 W. Stagecoach Road to commercial manufacturing.

Lord, who is representing the Concerned Citizens for a Safe Community in its lawsuit against the Office of the Federal Detention Trustee over the proposed federal detention center at 2250 E. Mesquite Ave., lists the address of her law practice as 280 W. Pechstein Road.

Lord told planning commissioners she identified 14 businesses within a half-mile of her home.

"There's a prison two miles up the street," she said. "There is no way anybody is going to be able to sell their property in that area as rural residential estates.

"The only chance to get our value out of those properties is to let it be commercial. When they put in their master plan in 2007, there wasn't anything in there about the prison."

Grodzinsky urged the RPC to uphold the integrity of the master plan, which was approved in 2004 as a general guideline for the zoning map.

He said his company spent hundreds of thousands, even millions of dollars, on its plan for a high-end equestrian, residential community on 443 acres north of Irene Street and west of Lola Lane.

"We have a development agreement to develop with large lots in a private community. My whole purpose of being here today is a desire to try and preserve the master plan. Everybody keeps whittling away at it with very good emotional reason but I think it's a mistake," Grodzinsky said.

Parcels that were zoned commercial are on Blagg Road, a main section line road. But west of there, the development is residential, he said. That low density residential zoning is important to their project, Grodzinsky said.

"It has been alleged that residential uses can no longer be supported in this area because of the detention center. We totally disagree with such an assertion," he said.

"The detention center is almost three miles by road from the subject parcels and is separated by a state highway. The detention center has also incorporated earthen berms and landscaping to lessen its visual impact. As a consequence, it is very difficult to understand how the subject parcels could be negatively impacted by the detention center."

The RPC, by allowing mixed use zoning, which is a grab bag of allowed uses, would turn that neighborhood around Mesquite Avenue and Blagg Road into a blighted area, he said.

"The county has spent a considerable amount of time and effort to provide a master plan for Pahrump. The master plan only has value if one can rely upon it to be the guiding principles for the development community and the public at large," Grodzinsky said, reading from a prepared statement.

Grodzinsky added Lord didn't represent two of the couples owning parcels, as well as his company, which owns two parcels.

Lord countered Grodzinsky didn't live in the neighborhood being rezoned.

"Those houses are all we got," she said. "We worked all our lives to pay for them and it wasn't just about the prison, it was because of so many other businesses already there," Lord said.

But Nye County Planning Director Jack Lohman pointed out some of the commercial establishments Lord mentioned were miles away from the neighborhood.

At one point, RPC Chairman Bat Masterson told Lord: "The prison has absolutely nothing to do with this, nothing." Masterson said he lived closer to the detention center site than she did.

Donna Cox, chairman of the Concerned Citizens for a Safe Community, said the applicants weren't asking for heavy industrial zoning, only for mixed use. She added the Pechstein Ranch project, when it's built, will be fenced and separated from the neighborhood.

"I just think that you should appreciate these people that are living here now and keep things the way they are for them and worry about the people who are moving here later," Cox said.

RPC member Mark Kimball said county commissioners remanded the issue back to the planning commission Sept. 22 not because they agreed with the rezoning, but to receive more public comment.

"It could actually be argued that will become a good mixed use or light commercial area, but it's not there now. Everything really is rural. There are houses there and they are consistent with the master plan. That doesn't mean they couldn't change," Kimball said.

A mixed use zone could be a buffer between commercial and residential areas, Kimball said. He noted the RPC rezoned certain thoroughfares like Homestead Road and Mesquite Avenue based on a request from a group of property owners.

But Masterson said rezoning an area commercial or commercial manufacturing can affect the value of adjacent residences.

"If someone could show me what is going to go in here, what type of businesses, and they're going to move all the residences out, I might vote in favor of it," Masterson said.

The request for the commercial manufacturing parcel was to allow a roofing business, already operating, as a non-conforming use with the current zoning. Consultant Dave Richards of CivilWise Service said the owner can't get state certification on a commercial water and sewer system until they get commercial zoning.

Lohman said the surrounding properties were residential. RPC member Nevada Tolladay said the grandfather concept is to protect the rights of businesses established prior to zoning.

"But inherent in the concept of grandfathering is an intent that, over time, those incompatible adjacent usages would diminish through attrition," Tolladay said.

He said the applicants, the John and Constance Tate trust, would be able to continue their roofing business without the rezoning. But Tolladay added, "My impression is the intent of the applicant here is to change the zoning of their property, thereby enabling circumstances to occur that would possibly bring in additional, different businesses.

"That's contrary to the intent of grandfathering."