Gardnerville denies recommendation for manufactured home project expansion

A master plan and zoning map amendment that would have allowed the extension of a manufactured home park south of Gardnerville was recommended for denial by the town board 5-0 last week.

Dubbed Stone Villas II, property owner Butch Peri is seeking approval for a 252-manufactured home park on 43.8 acres near the Muller Lane Parkway roundabout.

The project must also go before the planning and county commissions with the request to gain approval.

Town board members agreed with their staff that the argument that the increase in housing prices across the county would justify a master plan amendment would be easier to approve if the previous 159 units on the property had been built over the last two years.

However, no work has been conducted on the property.

Gardnerville’s Plan for Prosperity, which is included in the Master Plan, requires that the town reach 85 percent build-out.

Town Manager Erik Nilssen said that the town is conservatively around 56 percent built out, with several large projects in the works.

The request would change the master plan designation from agricultural to multi-family residential with a manufactured home overlay.

“You’re planning for the future, even though the current is not taking place,” said Town Board Chairman Mike Henningsen. “I don’t think we need more, until we see some action on what we’ve already got.”

Member Mary Wenner said she agreed with Henningsen.

“You haven’t got phase 1 done yet,” she said. “If everything sells immediately, then that would be proof it’s needed.”

Town Board member Bill Chernock said he was on the steering committee for the Plan for Prosperity and the 85 percent figure was a big deal.

“It puts pressure on the industry to do infill projects,” he said. “I hoped to be sitting here, saying yes. There’s nothing about the project I dislike but we made a promise to the community — not to continue outward until we reach a point of 85 percent of what’s here. That’s the wall I keep running into. I can’t get around that promise we made to those people, who put in a lot of their time.”

The water rights on the property were sold years ago, prompting Henningsen to observed that the farmland isn’t viable.

“I agree with you that’s not exactly the best farmland in the Valley,” he said.

Town Board member Jim Park recognized that the property would likely be developed at some point.

“We all know it’s going to be developed eventually, but I can’t support it right now,” Park said.

Nilssen’s analysis listed 1,857 units built in the town, with another 1,020 units included in the Virginia Ranch subdivision. That developer is obligated to finish Muller Lane Parkway to where it ends south of Toler Lane. Ashland Park contains 190 units just north of Toler Lane and also includes a segment of unbuilt Muller Lane Parkway.

Construction is underway on the 81-unit Heybourne Meadows, located near Gilman Lane and there are 51 units in Martins Meadows, according to the list.

Nilssen said there are smaller parcels he did not count, including the lots along Main Street where the former East Fork Hotel and the Burga buildings once stood.