The developers of the third and fourth phases of the Riverpark development in Dayton have won the approval of the Dayton Regional Advisory Council for revisions in the original plan - but only if they include pathways, more open space and additional access points to the Carson River.
"We're not connecting our communities," said council member Stacie Paterson. "It's just like little individual cities. We want to keep that friendly, rural way of life and we're losing it to these big subdivisions."
The council voted to approve revisions provided the developer compromise with county officials who also have called for more open space and pathways. They also directed the developer to create more places for children to play and wait for school buses.
"No one wants to drive a mile to recreate," Lyon County Planning Director Steve Hasson said. "If you're going to have 200 houses crammed in one space you have to have outlets for them to have places for children to play and a school bus staging area."
Capital Engineering's Mark Rotter argued that the pathways could become sites of graffiti and crime, and that the developer, Reynan and Bardis, doing business as Riverpark Properties LLC, had allowed for more than 30 percent of the development to be open space, most of that along the Carson River.
He argued it was not cost-effective to build more.
"The residential construction tax of $1,000 per home won't pay for all the pathways and miniparks you folks want," he said, adding that developers in Sacramento had found pathways to be "a problem child."
"We're not Sacramento," Paterson reminded him. "We're not anywhere close to the things in Sacramento."
Paterson also pointed out that since the area along the Carson River was a basin for effluent, it couldn't be developed, and wasn't mentioned in previous talks with county officials.
Also, since the area was all along the river, it did nothing to break up block after block of houses.
"When you drive through the development, all you see is houses and fences," she said. "You don't see anything else."
The Riverpark Phase III development originally consisted of a of a 524-lot subdivision on 324.29 acres off of Fort Churchill Road in the Mark Twain area of Dayton.
The revised total allows for one fewer lot on the same amount of acreage with half of the lots being revised.
For the Riverpark Phase IV section, the original map showed 231 lots on 89 acres, but the revised map shows 277 lots on 88 acres, or 46 more lots on one fewer acre.
The proposed development also included a 10-acre school site, a 13-acre park site and a 25-acre wastewater treatment faculty.
Hasson said he was pleased at the effort to compromise.
"Each development of any magnitude lasts about 225 years," Hasson said. "How you design it is how folks are going to live for 10 generations."
- Contact reporter Karen Woodmansee at kwoodmansee@nevadaappeal.com or 882-2111 ext. 351.