Update: Minden project approved by commissioners

Update: What project proponents call an extension of the previous subdivision at Monte Vista was approved by Douglas County commissioners on Thursday.

The 116-unit multi-family project is located on either side of Monte Vista Avenue, north of Jake’s Wetlands in Minden.

Planning commissioners approved a 4-2 with the recommendation that county commissioners also prohibit parking along the avenue.

The project has been on the books since 2001. It was all part of a larger plan approved for the location between Highway 395 and the future Muller Lane Parkway.

A traffic study was done for that larger plan that originally included a hotel-casino, a 110-space RV Park and 400,000 square feet of commercial space. That part of the project was altered by a master plan amendment in 2017.

“That was a sea change in the traffic in the specific plan,” R.O. Anderson Engineering planner Keith Ruben said. “All the mitigation in 2001 was based on basically a hotel the size of the CVI with a 100-space RV Park … and the 400,000 square feet of commercial floor area, which is about the equivalent of about two and a half of our Walmarts.”

That mitigation included building an entrance at highways 395 and 88 and a roundabout.

There was a proposal to include no parking in the covenants, codes and restrictions, that Planning Commissioner Paul Bruno referred to as “illusory,” and Planning Commissioner Dave Nelson said was a “joke.”

Attorney A.J. Hames agreed that even if no parking signs were put up, they wouldn’t be enforceable.

“Even if the sign was put on the property of the development, it would still be attempting to state what could happen outside the development on the roadway,” Hames said.

A request by residents to reduce the duplexes on the east side of Monte Vista to a single story was not something the developer would agree to, Ruben said.

“I think there’s been ample notice given for 20 years what that was zoned for and that they were planned as townhomes,” he said. “There is some due diligence, they could have easily found out if they were worried about it at the time they bought their house.”

Residents were also concerned about the intersection of Highway 395 and Muller Parkway.

The county portion of the parkway across Park Ranch Holdings land is required to be finished by December 2025. The county and property owner Mike Pegram are discussing the construction of the portion that would connect the present and future segments of the highway.

Whether a light is installed at that intersection is in the hands of the Nevada Department of Transportation.

“The warrant study needed to do a light at Muller and 395 likely will happen when Muller punches through by 2025,” Hutchings said, referring to traffic as a dark art of the engineering world. “God willing and the creek doesn’t rise, that’s when it’ll go through.”