A proposed housing project on the former Eastside Cannery site cleared a key hurdle this week.
The Clark County Planning Commission on Tuesday evening approved plans by homebuilding giant Lennar Corp. for a 279-lot subdivision on the now-empty former hotel-casino plot in the eastern Las Vegas Valley.
Spanning about 29.5 acres, the project site along Boulder Highway at Harmon Avenue would feature a community of two-story single-family houses.
The proposal is being sent to the Clark County Commission for final action at its Aug. 5 meeting, county staff announced.
Land-use attorney Stephanie Gronauer of law firm Kaempfer Crowell, representing Lennar, told the Planning Commission that the freestanding houses will feel like townhomes. They will be built on compact lots and feature small backyards and frontyards, she said.
She also said the project would feature two park areas and a trail.
“It’s a really walkable community,” Gronauer said.
Concerns from county staff
Casino owner Boyd Gaming Corp. imploded Eastside Cannery’s hotel tower in March, after saying it intended to sell the site for residential use.
In general, developers often go under contract to buy a property and then close escrow after they obtain project approvals for the site.
Eastside Cannery had been closed since the onset of the pandemic, and Las Vegas-based Boyd previously said there was not sufficient market demand to reopen the property.
County staff had recommended denying the proposed housing development, saying in reports that the project site is more conducive to a higher-density project, given its location along Boulder Highway and the high-frequency bus service in that corridor, and the access to a bus route along Harmon.
Staff also had concerns with the homes’ driveways, which, they noted, would only be 5 feet long.
The separation between the garages and the edge of the street “does not allow for adequate sight distances while backing out of the garage, creating unsafe circulation,” and the driveways “will also not be long enough to accommodate parked vehicles under the proposed design,” staff wrote in a report.
Plus, street parking is “fairly limited,” the report added.
‘It avoids that conflict’
Gronauer told the Planning Commission that drivers can’t fit their cars on a 10-foot driveway and that the cities of Henderson and Las Vegas both allow a 5-foot option.
The reason they allow this, she added, is “because you can’t park on a shorter driveway. And so it avoids that conflict and that issue that makes communities really not very livable, and Lennar does not want that.”
She pointed to subdivisions that have 10-foot driveways and showed pictures of cars parked over the edge, encroaching along the street.
She also cited subdivisions with 5-foot driveways and stated that drivers weren’t parking on them, and she presented pictures that showed a less-cluttered look along the streets.
According to Gronauer, there will be numerous parking stalls in Lennar’s new project and enough room for street parking, with one spot every two homes.
Contact Eli Segall at esegall@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0342.
