EDITOR:
Peri Enterprises seeks to change about 60 acres near Pine Nut and 395 from agriculture to commercial. For what is not clear, but an article in The R-C last July talked about 1.5 million square feet of commercial development, 10 times the size of the recently approved Walmart.
Last April, the Gardnerville Town Board approved a similar request for the land on which Walmart was approved. It was disclosed then that the project would involve up to 200,000 square feet "box store." Shortly thereafter the matter went before the county commission. Minimal notice was provided, the staff's report made no mention of the big box retail it knew was coming and the commission approved the zoning change with virtually no discussion.
We all know what happened next. Walmart's proposal soon surfaced and was eventually approved by staff with no county hearings and little consideration of its impacts. Will the county take the same hands-off approach with Peri Enterprises?
We have grossly overzoned our county with endless approvals for residential development, little of which was warranted. We haven't much in the way of an economic base here. Agriculture struggles. What industrial base we do have is not growing. Residential development is not a basis for sustainable economic development as we've now learned. And our population is actually declining.
But instead of learning from our mistakes in the residential sector we're now repeating them in the commercial sector. Our community is littered with vacant commercial properties. Plus we have the mess up at Topsy and failed projects at both ends of town. Without steady economic expansion supporting sound residential growth it is hard to see how Walmart can succeed here except at the expense of other businesses.
Yet we now have a proposal to triple the amount of vacant commercial land in Gardnerville without any clear economic justification. We continue to allow the demands of a few property owners, to get their zoning while they can, to determine our future, instead of a vision that is in the broader public interest.
If Peri fails somewhere along the way we'll just have another blight on our community. And if Peri succeeds we'll see the suburbanization of our historic small towns leapfrog well to the south, something few want.
The county should just say no to Peri. It has no obligation to rezone land. Tell Peri to come back when the local economy is thriving, the failed projects already approved have been occupied by vibrant businesses, Walmart is open and operating without harm to the rest of our stores and the existing inventory of vacant commercial land has been absorbed into our economy.
Even at that, though, we should be doing this sort of thing in or closer to town. And hopefully with more character than the bland, generic corporate architecture that the county seems so fond of.
To learn more about the Peri project, submit comments or get on the county's mailing list, Call the planning department at 782-6217.
Terry Burnes
Gardnerville
