Arizona Developers Welcome Spillover From Las Vegas

[depakid]

It seems fitting that the most prominent resident to emerge from this dusty desert outpost is Andy Devine, a Western actor who was best known for playing helpmates to the likes of John Wayne and Roy Rogers.

Fitting because Kingman, an area of just 40,000 people, is poised to become the freshest face in the Sun Belt’s growth spurt. But even as Kingman rises, the question remains whether it will become a star in its own right or, like its famous son, is destined to be a sidekick to the region’s flashier metropolises, particularly Las Vegas.

Two major developers based in Nevada — Rhodes Homes and the Mardian Group — have won approval to build communities in the Kingman area that, by 2040, could have a combined 80,000 new homes.

The mayor of Kingman, John Salem, predicts that would mean an additional 150,000 residents, a conservative estimate by other accounts.

Driving this development is not so much that the world has discovered Kingman, but that the Las Vegas region is starting to run out of land and water to sustain its growth.

A $240 million, four-lane bridge across the Colorado River is due to replace the two-lane road that now crosses the Hoover Dam between Arizona and Nevada in 2010, making travel between the areas much easier.

When that happens, Mr. Salem predicted, it will be difficult to keep what he calls “the Kingman secret” quiet any longer.

“It’s gorgeous here, we don’t have any natural disasters, no forest fires, no hurricanes, tornadoes or floods, good schools, lots of cheap land, the cost of living’s down, we have proximity to the Colorado River, to Flagstaff, to Las Vegas, to Phoenix,” said the mayor, who won election in May on a platform of being friendlier to developers.

“We’re right in the middle of everything,” he continued. “There’s going to be quite a few more people looking to Kingman once the dam bypass goes through.”

There is also, so it seems, “much more water than anyone really realized,” said Chris Stevens, an executive for Rhodes Homes, whose Pravada development west of Kingman in an unincorporated area known as Golden Valley is expected to include 33,000 homes on about 5,000 acres.

Preliminary studies by hydrologists for the Mardian Group and for Rhodes Homes have convinced the Arizona Department of Water Resources that there is a 100-year water supply for the developments.

Leonard Mardian is particularly bullish on the idea that many of his residents will make what he says will be a one-hour drive to work in central Las Vegas from the Ranch at White Hills, the first of his three planned communities about 30 miles southeast of the Hoover Dam and 40 miles north of Kingman.

Mr. Mardian said he planned to sell homes at one-third the cost of those in southern Nevada.

Both Mr. Mardian and Mr. Stevens say their companies are undeterred by the weak housing market, even as Las Vegas and Phoenix suffer some of the nation’s highest foreclosure rates and steepest home-value declines. Las Vegas in particular, they note, is on the cusp of yet another boom, with 50,000 hotel rooms expected to be added to the resort corridor by 2012.

“We can’t say we’re in a bad cycle right now so we should just stop what we’re doing,” said Mr. Stevens, whose company has about 500 $2,000 deposits on the first wave of Pravada houses and has billboards advertising houses starting around $140,000. “We can’t do that. You have to just recognize that we’re going to go through down cycles and up cycles.”

The anticipated Vegas boom translates into an additional 113,500 new resort-related jobs alone, according to calculations by Bill Lerner, a Deutsche Bank gaming stock analyst

More: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/10/us/10kingman.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

Sometimes the stupidity in America is so astonishing that it simply defies comment.

[medeak]

1. he'll do well with retirees

Kingman is cooler than Laughlin

[izquierdista]

3. All is relative

A blast furnace is cooler than the surface of the sun.

[bananas]

2. "Canamex Corridor"

The bridge is going to have a nice view.

http://www.nv.gov/NDOT_South_HooverDam.htm


"Pedestrians will be able to park and walk across the bridge for views of Hoover Dam. The dam will not be visible to drivers on the bridge, however."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoover_Dam_Bypass

[medeak]

4. what baffles me

is how they are configuring this massive boom Vegas is supposedly going to have when only one casino operator (Wynn) has the chops to make it through the huge downturn of late?

[depakid]

5. Seems to the that the analyst at Deutsche Bank hasn't been paying attention

to the state of the economy in Nevada.

Last I heard there was a profound state budget crisis, and Arizona's not far behind.

[pscot]

6. Didn't Chaco Canyon used to be

the last stop on the CanaMex corridor?