August '08 Las Vegas Government—Planning & Developement Column

City Adopts Two Additional Elements to its Master Plan

School Facilities and Community Design

Added to Las Vegas 2020 Master Plan

The Las Vegas City Council adopted two elements to its master plan Wednesday. The School Facilities and Community Design Elements are two of 18 master plan elements that are required by state of Nevada statute.

The School Facilities Element describes the school systems and facilities located in the city of Las Vegas and sets forth goals, policies and programs that encourage decision-makers to provide support for these facilities and ensure that they are easily accessible to the public.

The School Facilities Element encourages a joint planning effort between the city of Las Vegas and the Clark County School District. The city will coordinate the notification of a proposed school’s neighborhood prior to its design and development to ensure community involvement. The city’s zoning code, Title 19, is proposed to be amended to require a special use permit and site development review for primary and secondary schools located within the city. Lastly, the city supports the design of community schools to enable public use of school recreational facilities and open space.

The Community Design Element of the Las Vegas 2020 Master Plan replaces the original Urban Design Element which was adopted in April 1992. Since 1992, the city has implemented several programs considering urban design matters in the city’s zoning and subdivision regulations, and development and design standards.

Additionally, urban design guidelines have been developed for street, highway, trail, transit and parking facilities, housing programs, historic districts and sites. Finally, landscape standards have been developed for public and private projects. The practice of urban design has evolved to embrace provisions for citizens’ health and safety, and environmental sustainability through sound resource conservation and management practices.

The elements key will be accomplished by amending the Las Vegas Zoning Code

Title 19 to:

· Create development standards for Transit Oriented Design to improve transportation connectivity to reduce the use of automobiles, fossil fuels and greenhouse gas emissions, foster a healthy lifestyle and minimize the amount of land used for development.

· Create a form-based code, a type of zoning code that utilizes graphics to illustrate zoning regulations, with an emphasis on the form and scale of buildings to improve community design standards, establish neighborhood identities and context, and enhance the appropriate mix of uses and connectivity within and between neighborhoods and/or districts.

· Establish guidelines and standards for infill and new development that support sustainable growth through resource conservation and management.

City Designates Woodlawn Cemetery

to Historic Landmarks Register

The Las Vegas City Council has designated the Woodlawn Cemetery, located at 1500 Las Vegas Blvd. North, as a city historic landmark.

The Historic Preservation Commission nominated the cemetery because it meets the city’s historic landmark designation requirements; it is older than 50 years, it reflects the city’s cultural, social, political and economic past and it is an established visual feature within the city.

This designation meets many of city’s historic preservation goals listed in the Las Vegas 2020 Master Plan and its Historic Properties Preservation Element including the preservation, maintenance and protection of districts of historic interest and to promote and encourage the stability of designated landmarks by preserving their historical and architectural integrity.

The cemetery continues to operate today more than 90 years since it opened in 1915. Woodlawn Cemetery is basically 40 acres created from three phases of development. This first section is extremely important in design and content as those who are buried in this section are a finite number of original pioneers that were responsible for the creation and survival of the community. According to the nomination report for the National Register of Historic Places, the cemetery includes “…members of nearly every pioneer family that lived in the Las Vegas Valley during the formative years.” The former sexton's or caretaker’s residence and one of Las Vegas' first well sites remain in this first section.

The first section, which borders Las Vegas Boulevard on the western edge, was designed and dated July 22, 1914, by surveyor J.T. McWilliams. McWilliams was a master of his trade and was responsible for nearly every major civic civil engineering project in the early historic period of the formation of the community of Las Vegas. He surveyed all of the original land purchases for the San Pedro Los Angeles & Salt Lake Railroad and designed the first official townsite in Las Vegas. City records from 1914 -1916 confirm the cemetery’s function as the community’s cemetery with an appointed Board of Trustees, the hiring of the sexton, and the construction of a tool house (later the sexton’s residence) and the well.

The second 10-acre section which borders the first to the east was designed and dated by Las Vegas City Engineer George Rittenhouse Sept. 20, 1944. Its burials date to the mid-forties, during a period of extreme growth in Las Vegas’ history due to war-time economics when the population grew from approximately 8,000 to 40,000.

The third and last 20-acre section borders the second to the east and hosts burials dating to the early sixties. It is relatively new and is not as historically significant as the first and second sections except that this is where the cemeteries that predate Woodlawn Cemetery intersect with it thus confirming it as the community’s preferred site for its burials.

There isn’t any other existing example of a Las Vegas location where all members of the pioneering community gathered. The early pioneers interred at Woodlawn represent the general demographic of early Las Vegas and the broad spectrum of groups that built the city. The cemetery broke the barriers of inclusion such as class, race and gender in death that existed in life. Woodlawn Cemetery became the indicator of a cohesive society that made a long-term commitment to the future of Las Vegas.