Parks pay heavy price in Clark County’s $80 million Red Rock development settlement

LAS VEGAS ( KLAS ) — The $80 million price tag on the settlement between Clark County and the developer of homes on the edge of Red Rock Canyon will have a lasting impact on the county’s budget and park projects throughout the valley.

More than half the money will come out of funds previously set aside for parks.

County documents show that $35 million is being reallocated from parks projects — $5 million from each of the seven Clark County Commission districts. An additional $8 million boosts the total hit for parks to $43 million.

Another $37 million from the Clark County Capital Projects General Fund will cover the remainder of the $80 million.

And while each district’s $5 million share will spread the parks pain equally, two projects in the southwest Las Vegas valley are actually losing funds that they thought they were getting.

A recreation center planned for James Regional Sports Park, 8400 W. Robindale Road, is now on hold as $2.9 million for that project has been reallocated. That park is in Clark County District A, represented by Commissioner Michael Naft.

In District F, represented by Commissioner Justin Jones, $1.6 million is being pulled from the Mountains Edge Recreation Center project.

Jones has been at the center of the story surrounding the county’s opposition to developer Jim Rhodes and Gypsum Resources. He was sanctioned for deleting text messages that favored the developer. Specifically, the sanctions cited willful destruction of evidence and defrauding/lying in court.

That finding jeopardized the county’s position in fighting the project. The $80 million settlement approved by the commission on June 18 was a hard pill to swallow, but the county stood to lose more than $2 billion if the case went to court.

Jones abstained from the June 18 vote, and again on Tuesday, July 2, when the county approved the reallocation of the $80 million to the Clark County Liability Insurance Pool.

When county commissioners approved the settlement, they said they intended to pay for it using money from the capital fund that hadn’t been allocated to specific projects yet. But the vote Tuesday took money from the James Regional Sports Park and the Mountains Edge Recreation Center — both near where Rhodes will be building in the coming years.

The Gypsum Resources project has a long and contentious history in the southwest valley. Dreams of homes on Blue Diamond Hill overlooking Red Rock Canyon changed through the years as the county fought plans and community activists rallied against Rhodes. The “Save Red Rock” nonprofit was created specifically to fight the development.

Jones did pro bono work for Save Red Rock while he was campaigning for the county commission seat.

When the settlement was reached in June, Gypsum Resources agreed to reduce the number of houses from 5,000 down to 3,500. The company also agreed to sell a portion of the most sensitive land to the county for $1.

The county also won a concession from Gypsum Resources on roadway access to the development. Officials didn’t want residential traffic to be routed to SR159, the road that connects the community of Blue Diamond and the far west end of Charleston Boulevard. The new plan calls for all access to come from SR160 — Blue Diamond Road. That access road still has to be built, and could cost the county an additional $6 million, even though the developer is building the road.

On Tuesday, the county designated the development as a Major Project, which requires a master-planned community instead of individual neighborhood plans. There will not be a golf course in the development.

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