William Lyon Homes, developer of Mountain Falls, is readying to add a new product to its master planned community, townhomes, recently gaining approval for an amended subdivision map that the Nye County Commission had originally denied several months ago.
The request to re-subdivide the already approved final map for its planning area six age-qualified community, titled Ovation, went before the commission in October of last year, where it met with resistance from four of five Nye County commissioners, including John Koenig, Leo Blundo, Donna Cox and Debra Strickland. At that time, William Lyon Homes was seeking to divide 42 existing lots into 83 parcels.
The item before the commission on April 7, on the other hand, asked for just 26 parcels to be divided to create 51 total lots. Mark Fiorentino, representative for William Lyon Homes, explained that the developer, after discussion with Nye County planning officials, had decided to remove all townhouse lots located on “T-streets” that were considered too narrow for access and parking. All townhouses will now be located on the wider spine road, Cactus Canyon Drive, which reduced the number of townhouse units to 51.
“The townhome is an important product for Mountain Falls, we think, and ultimately for the community as well. We tried to design them in a way to preserve the value of the town homes and to minimize the impact to the outside community outside of Mountain Falls,” Fiorentino stated. “You’ll see on the new maps that have been presented to you, many of these townhome lots have golf course views. They are located toward the interior of the master plan and the interior of the subdivision and they are all spread out… so you don’t have a congregation of lots of town homes in a particular area.”
Touching on the push-back William Lyon Homes had received for this item in October last year, Fiorentino said he understood and respected the position commissioners were in but the development agreement for Mountain Falls was clear, giving William Lyon Homes the authority it needs to develop a total of 3,200 homes and the ability to include a product such as townhouses.
“Many of these entitlements that exist for Mountain Falls (in the development agreement) happened way before your time and many of them are ones you would not support today,” Fiorentino acknowledged. “But again, I am grateful for your willingness to support those rights, even if you would not have necessarily voted for them yourselves. Townhomes are definitely allowed within the Mountain Falls planning area.”
Blundo, who initially voted against the item, made the motion to approve, remarking, “I am very conscientious of the water situation here in Basin #162. However, I am also very conscientious of people’s personal property rights. Whether I personally agree or disagree with a townhome being on a lot, that’s my own two cents. I believe, it’s your property, it’s your right, you do what you want to do with it.”
Nye County Commissioner Donna Cox, who also voted against amending the subdivision map in October, provided a second for Blundo’s motion. She added that all of the water rights necessary to develop out Mountain Falls are in place, so she felt approval was appropriate.
“They have an investment in this community and they do have a right to move forward with it,” Cox stated. “If it were done over again in this day, I would rather see it change but since it’s already been an agreement of the past… I don’t think I have the right to tell them they can’t build on their property…”
One commissioner whose mind was not changed on the matter was Koenig, who voted down the item in October and did not switch his vote during the April 7 meeting.
“We keep making smaller and smaller lots and again, you can only build ‘x’ number of homes so when that number of homes is built, you’re going to have a lot of land left over. I’d like to know what they plan on doing with that, if you can get back to me someday,” Koenig said before calling for the vote.
The motion to approve the amended subdivision map passed 4-1 with Koenig the sole voice against.
Contact reporter Robin Hebrock at rhebrock@pvtimes.com