Redevelop That!
Redevelop That!
How Henderson Turns Ideas Into Places People Love
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
If you’ve ever wondered how a city turns a sketch on paper into a place you can actually visit, this one’s for you. We sit down with Henderson’s current planning manager, Andy Roether, to unpack the real machinery of city planning—what “entitlements” are, why timelines can be fast without being sloppy, and how a team of planners acts more like project managers and translators than bureaucrats with a stamp. We get practical about the entire journey: checklists that spell out exactly what to submit, public hearing notices that bring neighbors into the loop, and the judgment calls that determine when to slow down for community conversations. Andy shares the inside track on digitizing the process—from online portals and GIS mapping to the quality control challenges that come with reviewing thousands of pages at once—and how Henderson keeps improving by borrowing smart ideas from peer cities and industry groups. Zoning takes center stage with a clear, no-jargon breakdown: commercial, residential, industrial, mixed-use, and why intensity and compatibility matter. We explore national trends like upzoning and the push for more flexible housing, then bring it back home to Henderson’s unique context, rural character, and infrastructure realities. We also hit a spicy topic—parking—and make the case for quality over quantity with safer walkways, smarter layouts, and shade that actually works in desert heat. Underneath it all is a simple promise: planning should build community. That means walkability, comfort, and places people love, balanced with a process that respects both businesses and neighbors. Hear how Henderson’s planners see themselves as referees—keeping the game fair, the rules clear, and the plays moving—while inviting more voices into the conversation. If you care about how your city grows and how quickly your project can open its doors, you’ll find tools, tips, and a candid look at what works. Enjoyed this deep dive? Subscribe, share with a friend who’s planning a project, and leave a review to tell us what topic we should explore next.
Welcome And Series Setup
SPEAKER_01Welcome back to redevelop that here with Dr. Tiffany.
SPEAKER_00Hey everyone, welcome back.
SPEAKER_01We're glad you tuned back in to our next episode here. We promised that we'd be back and uh bring you some more uh great interviews, and so we're here to bring you another great interview from our our City of Henderson series.
SPEAKER_00Right, behind the scenes at City of Henderson.
SPEAKER_01Behind the scenes. We are uh meeting with the planning department today, and so we had the opportunity to sit down with our uh city's planning current planning manager, Andy Rother, and we got to hear some of the behind the scenes of the planning world, and you probably will get more than you ever wanted to know about planning because as you'll hear in the interview, uh Andy and I kind of ramble on a little bit about planning, but it's fun. You'll enjoy it, I promise.
SPEAKER_00So uh we hit the the passion of the planners here, right? It's an extended episode.
SPEAKER_01You gotta, you know, when you start talking about planning stuff, it's just exciting times.
SPEAKER_00I remember when we first started and redevelopment was part of planning, and I thought everyone was speaking a different language because there were so many acronyms and processes I'd never heard of.
SPEAKER_01Yes, that is very true. And as you'll hear in the interview, we're trying to be better to not have so many uh acronyms and lingo, uh uh planning lingo so that it's a little more friendly when uh when you guys, as business owners and developers and come into the city, you'll uh you won't feel completely lost. So we're uh we're excited and glad that he sat down with us and gave us the some insights on the planning world. Um but before we hit that, you know, is there anything coming up, Tiffany, in the next few weeks, months?
SPEAKER_00There is Shop Small Saturday, and we'll be happening the Saturday after Thanksgiving, November 29th. So all of our businesses along Water Street will have promos and specials going on. We'll have over a hundred small businesses, we'll have artisans, crafters, food vendors, entertainment, all sorts of things in the plaza, activities for the kids. It's a great day to just come out and have fun for the whole family.
SPEAKER_01Again, another reason to come down and visit Water Street.
SPEAKER_00Exactly.
SPEAKER_01We keep promoting Water Street, and now we have another reason to come down to Water Street.
SPEAKER_00And then also to start off your holiday season, we have our Winter Fresh whoops, scratch that Winterfest tree lighting and drone show on December 4th, and the Winterfest night parade on December 5th. So make sure to bundle up and come down for both of those as well.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, those are always super fun activities to come down and bring the family and the light show, the light parade is a lot of fun.
SPEAKER_00It is and if you haven't seen a drone show yet, they are pretty remarkable.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, they are pretty remarkable, actually. We saw one in Tahoe. They did one for the 4th of July, and it's pretty cool.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, they're really cool.
SPEAKER_01So yeah, awesome. Well, great. Well, we're uh yeah, we're moving into the holiday season here. Thanksgiving coming up, and you know, the holiday other holidays coming right around the corner in December. So um be sure to check back and look in on our websites at Water Streetdistrict.com. You can see what other events and activities might be happening, and then uh you can always uh reach out to us. Uh you go to city of Henderson.com slash redevelopment, and you can uh get more information about redevelopment happenings and goings on um in the area.
SPEAKER_00So you can actually sign up. Um the city sends great newsletters about things that are going on in your neighborhood and special events that are upcoming that you can sign up for on the website at cityofhenderson.com.
SPEAKER_01Oh, it's even better. Yeah so check it out.
SPEAKER_00Right to your inbox.
Meet The Planning Manager
SPEAKER_01Awesome. Well, let's go ahead and uh take a minute, sit back, relax, and uh enjoy our interview with Andrew Rother. Welcome back to Redevelop That here with Derek Tiffany and Alejandro from the Redevelopment Agency. We're here today with our wonderful friend and guest from the community development department, current planning manager, Andy Rother.
SPEAKER_03Hey Derek, thanks for the invite. I really appreciate you guys letting me come on and talk about what we do in planning.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, we uh you guys are a big part of what uh the city is about. A lot of times when uh we have businesses coming in, they are sometimes you're uh you're the first step in that process in planning. And so it's kind of that uh initial contact uh that our businesses and our developers have have with the city. So it's important that we uh we start our series off in a way that uh people get to know who you are and that you're not a big uh the big bad government, just with a whole bunch of uh codes that you throw at them and make them confused of what's going on.
Planning’s Role And “Entitlements” Explained
SPEAKER_03That definitely is a perception, and there may be a little bit of that, but I think you know we look at ourselves as kind of the front door to the development process of the city, and also we look at ourselves the development process as a whole is kind of a big series of gears that are all moving at the same time. And so we're kind of the first gear that moves, but we're also the city's project managers on these development projects as they kind of work their way through the system. So our hands are on these things from the day people kind of approach us with an idea all the way up until the grand opening when they're putting the shovels in the ground and having the elected officials out there. Our team plays a role in that entire process, and it's um it's a lot of work, but it's something that we all really enjoy doing.
SPEAKER_01Well, it's definitely uh, you know, definitely a lot of work because there is definitely a lot of steps in the process, and uh and sometimes there's a lot of lingo that uh gets used that's not always common amongst uh everybody. And uh some of the ones I was thinking about as we were preparing for this was things like entitlements. You know, you know, when you uh when you work with somebody, when you say, hey, you need to get entitlements, what do they say? Like, what is that?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, and I mean a lot of it, that's a really good question, Derek. And a lot of it depends on the complexity of the project and the people that are working with us. And so we do everything from working with these lobbyists that you see at every single planning commission city council meeting on these huge projects to mom and pops looking to improve their homes. And so um, it's it's a point of emphasis for me as the manager with our team to not be as jargony. I think there's a lot of acronyms and terms that we use in planning. And I find that in every profession, whether we're dealing with the the engineers in public works or our parks and recfolk, when you're within kind of your people, you speak in this kind of coded language. And so it's something that we talk a lot about is when we're dealing with folks that we have regular interactions with, we can kind of lean into some of that jargony language. But we're also conscious of if we're just dealing with someone that wants to build a patio off the back of their home, we kind of have to um just talk in what we like to say regular English. And so, but but to your question about entitlements, that's just what they would um, depending on what it is, but it would allow them to kind of operate a business or do what they're trying to do at their home. This that's what the city would give them as an approval. So an entitlement could be a design review or it can be a conditional use permit, uh, could be a zone change. And so it's it it depends on what the project is for. But the entitlements are what they're seeking from the city, uh what this planning commission and city council will be approving, and when they leave, it would be what they have in hand to show that they have something approved. And entitlement, it's I mean, I don't even think we use that term in our code, but it's just a generic term that kind of nationwide we use to kind of talk about what kind of approvals you have from the city. Those would be your entitlements. I think simply that's how I would define it.
SPEAKER_01I think it's probably mentioned a couple times in the administrative section, but other than that, yeah, right. Not very often.
SPEAKER_03Because I mean we call them land use applications as kind of I mean, uh and as you talk about jargon, it's like we have like these different levels of jargon. And I think entitlements is kind of this national planning term, but um here we would say your land use applications. But but again, we we try to kind of speak to the people that we're dealing with. And so when we're just a lot of a lot of what we do is just helping regular folks trying to do some improvements to their home, and we try not to get into that kind of jargony language because it's just it's confusing everyone. So it's it's hard to do because when when you and I talk, you as you know, both we have a planning background, we can kind of speak in that language, but when we're kind of talking to our friends that are outside of it, we kind of I don't want to say dumb it down because it's really not dumbing it down, it's just a different using different terminology.
SPEAKER_01And I guess that's why I have to admit to uh admit to our listeners that uh my background is in planning. Andy and I actually shared a wall of offices for a long time, so I got to hear a lot of his uh phone conversations through the walls, and uh since they are not super thick, but I apologize for my language. It's quite all right. Uh but so yeah, the jargon sometimes is uh is can be intimidating to those who might be just coming in off the street as a business owner, and you say, Hey, you need a conditional use permit, you got to do this, you got to go through planning commission, city council, you know, and there they kind of give you this gloss-glossy-eyed look like what are you talking about? And and so then it's moving into that next step of now that we got past that part of it, let's talk about what you actually just have to do.
Cutting Jargon And Improving Customer Service
SPEAKER_03No, that's exactly right. And I think we've done a really good job. And you know, I've been here with you, I've been here about 12 years now at the city of Henderson, and I think what we've really improved kind of some of our communication with the general public on what the expectations are for this development process. And the first thing that starts with is that application that we were talking about has a checklist of all the different documents that you're required to submit. And so being able to sit down with someone over a document saying, here's a checklist, we need you to fill out this application form, it has to be signed by the owner. When we say justification letter, this is what we expect. When we say site plan, this is what we expect. So a lot of this is simplified by just really good communication. And we have a we have a great team in place that understands kind of the nuance of who are you talking to and and how do you have to explain this to them. And and again, we we use the term mom and pop a lot for the folks that we don't see all the time. And I think that that's just one of the things that we do on our onboarding and training of new employees is explain the difference between a lobbyist who has been in front of the city council a thousand times versus someone who's just off the street looking for help. And so there's a lot of, and I don't want to even call it hand holding because that kind of has a negative connotation, but there's just a lot of um customer service that that kind of occurs to help people through the process. And a lot of it is just kind of defining these terms, explaining what the expectations are. When do you need to be at a meeting? When do you need to give us these documents? And um, we're very proud of our process. I I came to City of Henderson after working at another local municipality here in southern Nevada. And I can tell you our process and our time frames are way more aggressive and um but we find them reachable. And so we're we're very proud of our ability to get someone in the door and get them out the door in six to seven weeks and something that in our surrounding states around us will take you six to eight months to get approved. And so we've always been development friendly here, but with that come some expectations of our friends on the private side as far as what they need to do to kind of help us keep their projects moving.
Timelines, Public Hearings, And Balancing Input
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that's definitely a I know working with a lot of the businesses and working with a lot of the development community, that's the things we hear a lot is that how people enjoy actually working with us and working with the city of Henderson because we do have that kind of like you said, establish that baseline expectation of this is what we expect from you. And in return, we are going to help you get through this process as efficiently as possible. And uh it's not our goal there to tie you up for the next year trying to get just an entitlement or a land use application right approved. You know, we'd rather have you in in the into the building department and into the civil plans or into engineering to get their approvals more quickly so we can get your project built or get your business open.
Process Modernization And Going Online
SPEAKER_03That's exactly right. And we're trying to be kind of the safeguard for our residents too on some of these projects. And and I think that's some of what our team has to look at with these projects is how um how is the public going to react to these? You know, we we do a public hearing process where we send out notices to everyone within a certain distance of the project based on what state law says we have to do. And in doing that, we get a lot of feedback from the neighborhood. And so I think in our effort to keep the wheels churning, we have to recognize what's not a big deal and what is a big deal. And some of these projects that we have a lot of public input on, there's a lot of concern over. Um, those are the ones that we tend to now slow down. We want to have neighborhood meetings, we want to kind of reach out to the to the neighbors, and we also want to follow up with them as these projects progress. But on the flip side of that is if it's something that seems very simple and something that by state law has to go through a public hearing process, we want to make sure that that occurs kind of we don't want to say we fast track it, but we do everything we can to kind of keep the wheels churning. And we're uh we're we're very proud of our ability to get something through our process really quick. And that's one of the things we do in the current planning division is we track those timelines. And so we're we're able to look back and see, hey, maybe there's a lag on these certain types of applications because there's some complexity with um like a different department that we have to bring in. And so we're always re-evaluating our process. And so I don't want to say we're kind of building the plane as we're flying it because the plane's kind of built, but we um we're always willing to take a step back and uh you know, we do updates to our code once a year, and we do it, we've done a lot of process improvements in the three or four years that I've been the manager of the team, and a lot of it's just an effort to modernize, you know. With COVID, we had to go online for everything, right? And that that was a a quick change for us, and it was something that we knew was coming, and we see a lot of c uh cities around the country had already gone that way, but COVID kind of really forced us into it. And um, but since we did it so quick, now we're kind of re-evaluating all the time. Is there a way that we can improve this? Can we change how we're doing this? Because something is lost between um everything just being submitted via email, kind of coming through um you know our portals online versus just the olden days when you and I worked together up front where people were handing us reams of paper to submit. And so just some of those changes as we progress, um, the technology of GIS and the mapping and our ability to kind of produce maps has changed in our career. So there's been a lot of changes in kind of the planning profession, and most of it's kind of just taking the technology that's available to all of us and kind of incorporating it into our day-to-day work. You probably remember, Derek, when we first started, we had paper maps, and so if someone changed the zoning, they were literally like writing on that map. And I don't know, I mean it just seems impossible to keep track of. But um, you know, with that comes the challenges of managing a team, knowing that the city of Henderson grow growed so fast through the the 80s, 90s, and 2000s, is now trying to look back and understand what was approved in 2004 on this site and how does that impact what we're doing today. And so I would say that's uh that's one of our biggest challenges is trying to kind of piece together what happened in the past. And um, as you know, we've had a a huge rash of retirements because we we ramped up hiring around Y2K and all of those folks are now slowly retiring. We're trying. We're trying, right. Yeah, I know. I got a couple years left too. But we um the division that I supervise, I think we we calculated at 40% of the team retired since COVID. And so there's been a huge turnover, but with that comes the opportunity to kind of move away from the old and kind of bring in people that are have a newer understanding of the technology. So I I I it while it's been a challenge because of all the institution institutional knowledge we've lost, it's also been an opportunity to kind of modernize our approach.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and I mean I I I'm sitting here thinking about you know the idea of the world of planning and the world of technology, and as they come and start becoming, you know, merging together, yeah, you're right. You know, when we were sitting there taking plans across the counter and having to hand stamp every piece of paper with a state a date stamp on it, and you know, that was very tedious and uh you know, always not always the funnest job in the world, but you know, had to be done because we had to document and process it. But now the idea that you can just take that overline and it automatically online uh does all that work for you is uh a huge advancement in terms of processing time and alleviating a lot of of um error in uh in the process.
SPEAKER_03Yep, no, it has been. And I think that what we've learned though is that there's also um the quality control of it is a little more complicated because you're not sitting there going through a document by document with someone across the table from you that can fix it. It's just showing up on your inbox and all of a sudden you have a thousand pages to review. And so that's one of the things that is we're taking on this year is how do we kind of change the process that we we've newly adopted to give us more of an ability of quality control up front? Because the problem is when we get 40 applications on a deadline day and each of them has four or five hundred pages of documents, asking our team that's processing all of these emails to actually like dive into that and do quality control is just something that we've we're not able to do. So the quality control comes a little later, but um, it worked really well when it happened up front because we can kind of kick things out that weren't ready to go, whereas now we're kind of accepting it. So yes, there's been advancements, but with it comes challenges, and it's just like everything. We we were adapting to it. And I think again, we um our barometer is the rest of the valley, and I think that when you know the good thing about working with the developers that we do is that they they don't their projects don't know city boundaries, and so we're able to kind of reflect with them on how are things working kind of throughout the valley, and it's what are they doing at the county or Las Vegas or North Las Vegas that we can incorporate into our process because everyone went through this kind of transition to online at the same time, and so um we're very conscientious in how do we get better at doing what we're doing, and it's um it's always a challenge because we're very busy and we're we're processing a lot of applications. We have planning commission next week, we had city council this week, and so in between the day-to-day work, me and the the three principal planners that work underneath me, we're always looking at ways that we can kind of improve our process, knowing that we may not have the time to do it all right now, but we have a running list of things that we want to take on, and um and a lot of it has to do with the procedures of our administration of our applications.
Quality Control Challenges At Scale
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Well, and I I like the the the that you pointed out the fact that we're willing to take feedback, that we're willing to listen to the development community, we're willing to listen to the businesses and say, hey, what's working, what's not working, and then be able to find ways to incorporate and weed out what is not working uh to better help streamline that process for everybody. Um and so I hopefully for those listeners out there to be uh let you know that we are engaged. Uh we would we love the feedback, we love your input. Tell us how we're doing. Yeah, because uh we you know we we do. We uh we take pride in what uh in being one of those communities here in the valley that uh we, as you mentioned earlier, being development friendly and hopefully uh business friendly. And right?
SPEAKER_03No, and I mean when I first started working here, that was something that was kind of I I don't know that it was said to me directly, but it's it's a kind of a vibe, if you will, that you pick up that there's a level of professionalism that occurs here in the planning department that um I think is it's something that we should all be striving for. And so I always felt like as the manager I've inherited kind of this legacy of high quality planning from the planners before me. And the cool thing is that the person, the city manager of the entire city was the director of the planning department when I first started here. So there's this legacy that goes beyond the city manager, even to our former city managers and our former assistant city managers, and there's a long line of folks that have been in the job that I am in today that have gone on to kind of bigger and better things at the city level, and so there's um there's a lot of discussion about what we do kind of all the way through the city, and um, there's there's always a bright spotlight on us, and and I think that kind of makes us perform better. But to your point about interacting with the business community, a lot of our staff are members of these different professional organizations. I'm a member of NAOPS General Uh Government Affairs, I meet with them every month, I give them an update on what's going on with the city of Henderson. We're involved in the Urban Land Institute, a lot of us are involved in the American Planning Association, we have some landscape architects on our staff, and we have some civil engineers on our staff here in planning. And so we take professional development very seriously, and we like to go back, um, go to these conferences and go to these um online sessions about what's going on in all of these different fields and bringing back ideas. And so one of the things I try to explain to our staff is if you see something that you think we could do better, don't be shy about it. Just let us know. And and we keep this list of things that we're we're trying to take on. I uh anytime we get a list and I go through it with my principal planners, we um we we look at this list of things that we want to achieve, and we kind of we we do a stop like red light, green light, yellow light to kind of determine what we could take on now and what's kind of a longer thing for us to look at. And so improving is always on our mind, and and again, we're we're pretty proud of what we inherited as far as a zoning entitlement process, and we're proud of where we're taking it kind of. And and we're in this big transition period, like we talked about with COVID and the online stuff, and so it'll be really neat to see where we are we're at in 10 years. But I'm I feel very confident we'll be doing a really good job. Hopefully, in 10 years I won't be here to but yeah, we'll be you and I will just be watching from afar complaining about things in the way that how it used to be better, like the like the our friends that retired due to us now.
SPEAKER_01We did it so much better back then.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, and they didn't. I could say that. I think um, you know, there's revisionist history and everything, you know. If you're sports fan, it was like this guy was the best, and you're you know, it's just I think everyone kind of thinks that their era was the best. And I'm uh I've just been so impressed with the kind of our younger generation of planners. They come into the job much more well-rounded, I think, than the folks did in our generation or the folks before us, and so there's a lot more knowledge, whether it's about um you know, when you graduate college with a planning degree, you know about how to make GIS maps, whereas back in our day, that was like a completely separate world. And so I think that um you know, as planning has evolved, the education and planning has evolved. And so I think that what we're seeing now is someone coming out of college today is much more prepared to kind of do this type of work than they were maybe 20 years ago.
Culture, Feedback, And Professional Legacy
SPEAKER_01Right. And I you know, and I'm sitting here thinking it's funny because you know, you and I, we could probably sit here and talk planning and planning uh, you know, strategies and well, I mean, uh yeah, I mean planning ideas and thoughts, you know, kind of the the whole gamut of what planning is about and different aspects of planning. And one of them comes to mind, I think about like sometimes with businesses or even developers, we talk about zoning. You know, what does zoning mean? You know, and uh the like you know, well, what's a community commercial zone versus uh a neighborhood commercial zone or you know, or industrial, you know, why is there three different industrial zones and not you know, and so that aspect uh that aspect of the city's you know code, planning code, uh is the like it's based around this zone, uh zoning. What you know, what's your uh what's your take on zoning? I'm gonna I'm gonna throw it out there because it's kind of one of the things.
Zoning 101 And Land Use Plans
SPEAKER_03I mean, yeah, it is uh and again, like we talked about like the history of planning. I think today we're in an interesting place with zoning where there's a there's a push to kind of look at what how we're doing zoning and maybe kind of change it. And so zoning, I mean, very simply, like my elevator kind of speech version to talk to like what we said, like a mom and pop would be zoning is uh dictates what you could do on your land, whether it's zoned, like you said, community commercial versus neighborhood commercial. Um at the 30,000 foot view, you have commercial, residential, industrial, and then kind of a mixed-use zone, which would allow a combination of those things. But diving into the details within the zones, using your example of commercial, we have community commercial versus neighborhood commercial, and the difference there is the level of intensity of which is allowed to do. And it's the same with uh industrial, where we have three levels of industrial. We have industrial park, uh, industrial general, and industrial limited. And what you're allowed to do as a business within each of those zones is different. And the reason that it's different is it depends on the proximity to residential development or the proximity to sensitive lands, and so every city does zoning, every city does zoning differently, but um there is some consistency across the board throughout the nation, and even just the colors on the map, you know, you know, this blue is an industrial, and pinks and reds are commercial, and then the browns and the yellows are are residential, and that's that's kind of universal. But simply put, zoning is just a snapshot that lets a property owner know what they can do on their property. And um do zones change? Yes. And so that's a lot of what we work with now is someone owns a piece of property, it's zoned for a residential, they want to change it to commercial, they would come and meet with us and explain to us why they want to change it. And um within that, then and I don't know how deep you want to go on this, we have what's called a land use plan, and the land use plan is kind of the umbrella over the zoning. And so the land use plan has its own uh categories, but those are more generic residential, high density residential, low density residential, commercial, and then within those land use categories you have zones. And so when someone wants to change the zoning, they have to make sure that what they're changing to doesn't impact the land use plan, and if it does, then we have to change that too. And I think one of the things I've learned, Eric, working here for 20 years and then going to these conferences nationally is we change zoning a lot here in southern Nevada. And you and I, we don't look at it as that big of a deal because we've just seen through our career, and I've probably written something like 1200 staff reports in my younger career when I was doing that in a lot of them for zone changes. Yeah, and we just do that a lot here, and uh, it has to do with the growth of our community. But when we talk to these folks in these like more established Midwestern, eastern coast city, like the the act of rezoning is like this huge lift. Yeah, and um it's just funny because when we hear that, we kind of look at each other at these conferences and we're like, not out here, like we we change zoning like you know, giving out candy on Halloween kind of. But it's um but still there's thought put into it. We're not just changing anything that anyone wants to change, but um, it's just recognizing that hey, the idea that we had when the zoning was established on the site 25 years ago, things have changed. And so maybe it doesn't make sense that this area is industrial anymore because homes are kind of encroaching into the area and we we need more commercial services. And so trying to balance the different land uses throughout our city is an important part of zoning, making sure that we're not moving away from too much of one. It's kind of just it's a balancing act. You don't want to have too much industrial land, you don't want to have too much commercial land, you don't have too much residential. It's it's creating that balance where people have access to the jobs and access to services that they don't have to drive all over the place. And so it's it's a constant balancing act, and it's um it takes not just our team, it's also an effort that it we depend on folks citywide because we need to know where the roads are going or what kind of utilities the site has. And so the collaborative process in our zoning process here is to me one of the things that sets us apart from a lot of the municipalities that we kind of compare ourselves to.
SPEAKER_01Well, and I like the that um description you gave, because in the sense, in the sense it gives a great uh idea of how cities work, right? Is that it's not just free-for-all that we have and established that through we've thought about it, you know, the community has thought about it and we've established saying, hey, we need, you know, we need residential here, we need some commercial here, and we need it spread out throughout so people aren't, like you said, traveling all over the the valley trying to get their needs met, you know, especially daily needs type stuff. And so that's why the importance of having kind of that smaller neighborhood commercial in areas, because then you have daily needs that are closer to the residential where people are, and but industrial are more you know, business and uh employment centers, and so people travel a little further. And I like the way they use the word intensity, that you know, that a lot of this is based on the intensity of uses that are allowed within those areas of the city. You know, putting industrial next to residential is not always the best idea. You know, when you have big industrial manufacturing and residential right next door to it, they don't usually get along very well with each other. And so uh absolutely true.
Intensity, Compatibility, And Mixed Use
SPEAKER_03And I I mean I you know this because you you've taken these same tests I have for professional development, but I mean zoning by definition was created to stop doing what you just described, but they didn't want to have um the meat plaque the meatpacking facilities next to the residential homes. And so zoning was established to separate noxious uses from where people live. And so um, you know, at its core, that's why we're doing it. Now, as we're getting into kind of a more modern era, we recognize that this kind of bifurcation of uses can create some issues. And so that's where we get into these mixed-use zonings where we have you're allowed to have commercial services and residential kind of stacked on top of each other or kind of living next to each other, and also the intensity of industrial because a real low-intense industrial park, which is just basically an office building, right, probably can be near homes, whereas something that's a little heavier intense, where they're smelting metals or whatever, whatever they're doing in those places, those are the things that we want to make sure that we keep far away from where people live. But also recognizing that the people that work at those places need to live somewhat nearby. And I think that's some of the strain in our region that zoning has is when we have too much job areas and and the housing's so expensive, all of a sudden we're putting a stress on our transportation network because the people that are working in a facility on the southern part of the valley now have to live in the northern part of the valley. And so those are all things that we take into consideration. But you know, there's a big push nationwide in zoning to relax residential standards, and that's to allow um, you know, I I I read in a paper once that kind of like it hit me right between the eyes. I thought it was a funny way of saying it was zoning was created to separate people from noxious uses, it wasn't to create to separate people from other people, which is kind of what it's turned into. And so kind of the weaponization of zoning to kind of stop um you know what we call NIMBYism or or whatever the case is is something that we work through, but it's also that's an acronym for not in your not in my backyard. We've been doing this like 20 minutes, and that's the first one that I've done. So I think pretty good.
SPEAKER_01I think they're pretty good. I was like, government was all about acronyms, but I think NIMBY is like a pretty well. It's a pretty well, but just in case.
National Trends: Upzoning And ADU Debates
SPEAKER_03But so the push that's happening nationally, and we see in certain cities across the country, is kind of deregulating single family zoning and allowing any type of residential to occur. And I think we do a lot of that here downtown in the downtown area of Henderson, a lot of which is due to our downtown master plan. I know that you had a big hand in trading, but uh what we're seeing, and I don't know how popular it would be here, is if you live in an area that's zoned residential, whether it's high density, medium density, or low density, you have the ability to build like a fourplex on a lot. So that would be in like our rural neighborhoods. Someone could knock down their home, build a Of a four-unit apartment building, and um yes, that would create a lot more housing, but then would it change the character of the neighborhood? And so those are kind of some of the conversations we're having when we kind of talk about following national planning trends because that's one that's it's been going on for a few years, and I you know it's been taken on. I have a brother that lives in Minneapolis, and that's so I know that it's happening there where they've kind of just deregulated residential zoning, and it's um it's something that's gonna be coming. I mean, something that we're we're talking about, but it it'll be interesting to see how it plays out because we have a very large active area of rural neighborhood folks that live in half acre and one acre lots. And I think that they want to, you know, there's a very big desire to maintain that lifestyle as the the world has kind of encroached upon them with the growth of this valley. Um those areas are becoming kind of more and more or less and less isolated, and um, you know, but the idea of us allowing kind of more of a medium density kind of multifamily within those residential areas, I don't think it's gonna go over too well. And so that's where we we take all the stuff that's happening at the national level with a grain of salt because we are a little different here, and so we we we do want to protect our rural lifestyle and the folks that live in those areas don't want to see more traffic, and so this idea of changing residential zoning to allow any type of residential is something that is on our mind, but how do we do that? And I think that um now I'm looking at the map behind you. The West Henderson area, there it's it's ripe for growth, and there's a lot of kind of wide open areas, and so doing something like that in an area that's not established already may be kind of the better answer for us. Trying to kind of do this now into an area that's been established as a rural neighborhood, it just won't go over well, and it's probably from a planning standpoint not the right thing to do because the roads aren't set up for more traffic, the utilities aren't set up for more traffic and things like that. But but again, our ability to look at what's going on nationwide and and trying to figure out how do we incorporate that into what do we do here is is is a large part of the challenge that we have because you know another thing is regulating the amount of parking spaces that like a commercial building uses. Yeah, I know it's like it's one of those things that nationwide they're kind of moving away from that.
SPEAKER_01Parking is a big uh parking is a big thing, yeah. People like to park next to their businesses, and I you know, I can think that's fairly relative relevant to our discussion here today with business owners is that sometimes parking is not right in front of your building. That you know, sometimes parking is going to be a little bit further away, or you know, it's uh it's uh that's as you're talking about a national trend is to get away from park minimum parking standards and having deregulating it, right? Yeah, and just kind of going but parking is parking.
Parking Philosophy: Quality Over Quantity
SPEAKER_03Parking is parking. And I I mean I'm all for some of that, and I've been you know push beating that drum a little bit internally for gosh almost a decade about deregulating parking. My take though is that we shouldn't be, we as planners shouldn't be dictating what a developer needs to provide to their personal businesses, but we also have to acknowledge that we don't have a transit system that that can kind of help fix that problem. And I think a lot of what we see in other parts of the country is they've deregulated parking because a lot of the people aren't driving their cars to get to these businesses. They're they're parking or they're taking transit. And so we may not be ready for that deregulation because we don't have a system to get people moving other than driving their cars. Right. But what I like to tell our planners is our focus really should be on the quality of the parking of a of a development, not on the quantity of it, because our codes are based off of um the ITE, which is uh International Transportation Engineers Manual, which dictates it's kind of a guess, if you will, of how much parking each business should be. Yeah, I mean it depending on how you feel about it. I mean, I don't think that educated, but it's a guess and it's it's relative nationwide. And and again, we like to see how unique we are here. And so, like dictating how much parking a business needs based on some manual to me, I'd rather trust the developer of knowing how much parking they need. And hey, if they shortchange themselves, that's a problem that they have to deal with. And so, yeah, it's um parking's a big thing that we talk a lot about a lot, but I think our focus as planners should really be about how do we get people into these businesses safe. I, you know, I now my daughter's turning 15 now the next week, but when she was younger, it really stood out to me because you you know, when you have a younger kid, you don't know what they're gonna get out of the car and then all of a sudden they're flying through the parking lot. And so having walkways in the parking lot and having shaded areas and and having um parking in places that you don't have to walk through landscaping, those are the things that I think our focus should be on, and not so much on you need 102 spaces for this use because this book told me so. And so if we get to a place, you know, in in my perfect world, it would be the developer says, based on my analysis of my business, this is how much parking I need. And we would say, okay, like that's great that you need that many spaces. Now we want it laid out in a certain way. Um, we don't want people to have to, you know, you can't build anything over a power line, so they like to put their parking there. And the issue we have with like apartments is all the parking, there's plenty of parking in these apartment complexes, but they're all shoved into one corner. And so if you lived on the other corner, you got to walk, you know, a half mile to go park your car, a quarter mile, and people they hate that. So I think what our focus should be on is how is the parking distributed uh amongst the site. But yeah, parking is something that we could probably talk about for days. We bore people to death.
SPEAKER_01But I was gonna say we could sit here and talk about planning principles all day long, and you know, yeah, we'd probably listen to it. People would uh tune us out. But I think what's uh what is important, what I think I want to make sure that uh I think I just wanted to kind of just we could wrap up in the sense of uh I'd like the idea of planning. And the reason I got into planning in the first place was the idea of being able to create community and tie and trying to establish and so all this all the principles and things that we talked about in terms of zoning and land use and parking and development codes and you know uses is really in this in the end creating community. You know, what kind of community are we creating? Are we creating a place that people want to come to? Do they want to live in? Do they want to do business in? And so I think that's you know, and that's where I you know I I came from with the idea of what kind of community would I want to live in? And you kind of referenced that a little bit in your you're talking about in the perfect world, you know, in your perfect community, what would that look like? And I think that's really, you know, I really want to ensure that, you know, I hope for our listeners they get out of this is that you know, planning is not just uh something that we that we do just to put a you know make you jump through hoops to make people jump through hoops to get to you know running their opening their business or they're a developer that they have to jump through this and this and this to just get their building built. You know, it's really about down to the you know, you in reference to your parking example of I don't really don't care how many parking stalls you have, but what does that parking feel like? What does that parking look like? You know, do do the people that park there do they feel comfortable being there? And you know, and especially in our environment, in our nice warm summers and uh windy uh windy winters, is that are people comfortable getting from the park, their parking area to wherever their destination may be? If it's their home, the businesses they're trying to go to, you know, whatever it may be. You know, so yeah, not not to harp on parking specifically, but and you know, even the idea of do we have walkable communities, do we have walkable areas? And that's all from planning, right? That's all come comes from starts with the idea of what do we want, you know, and so uh that idea that development codes and master plan communities and land use plans, those are all hopefully designed in a well in a way that establishes that vision of what we're looking for. So um it's very true, it's very true.
Planning For Community And Walkability
SPEAKER_03And I mean, I it's it's why we all got into doing this type of work is having the ability to plan for a city. And I think something one of our planners who has since moved to a different state said to me, I found it really profound, was she had been working in the city of Chicago or just in and around Chicago, and she said, you know, like there's people that work in Chicago for her whole career and don't ever get to work on kind of a raw land project. Everything is in fill, everything is you know, knocking down an old building and building a new one. Whereas here, and again, I think we're spoiled because that's just what we know from working here. And I mean, you're you're from here, I'm not, I moved here for a job, but I I didn't realize as a kind of a first-year planner how cool of an opportunity it was to shape kind of an empty canvas. And I think that that's one of the things that's really unique about Southern Nevada is I'd say a majority of the work our planning team does is on raw land, and we do a lot of infill work too. But to speak to what you're saying about having this vision, thinking about planning at that 30,000-foot view, what we call like long-range planning or master planning, it's such a cool opportunity here because we do have so much empty land and we do want to kind of see it d developed in an orderly way. And um the impacts to the services that we provide, running water and sewer to sites is so much more efficient if it's done with good planning, where we don't we're not kind of building out in the middle of nowhere hoping services reach to this area. It's kind of the orderly development of land. But how do you do that here in southern Nevada where we added in Henderson what 300,000 residents over the past three year or 30 years? And so that juggling act of orderly development, maintaining this high quality lifestyle, high quality development, but also acknowledging that people like me are moving here from all over the country for kind of the job opportunities, for the weather, for just living here in southern Nevada. And so it's um it's pretty impressive when you kind of take stock of the work that the folks in this planning department have done over the last 40, 50 years to maintain this high quality of life and um also acknowledge that the growth doesn't stop. We might have had a little bit of a slowdown during the downturn in 2010. But when you look at the annual population counts for the city of Henderson, it's just been flying through the roof. And so when I say we've kind of inherited this high quality legacy of planning, that's what I mean. It's like being able to manage the hundreds of thousands of people that have moved here to Henderson and still have us acknowledged as kind of a leader in the planning world, is something that I try to impart on the staff that works in this division and is something I felt like I learned from the planners here before me. And so it's really kind of an impressive endeavor if you look at it that way, that you know, with with this population growth, usually cities get overwhelmed with it and it just turns into kind of a big sprawl. And I don't think that we necessarily have that here.
SPEAKER_01No, we've definitely been very uh very diligent in crafting what you know what it is that we want to see. And I think that yeah, I agree. In terms of we did a whole history series here on the podcast that we talk, we we talked to former uh city attorneys and former city council people, people that lived here forever, you know, that literally been here since the you know the founding of the city. You know, and you know, we we've said this before, we have a fairly young city uh in terms of you, you know, you kind of made reference to that and implied that we haven't been here a long time, especially in the in the realm of as you look back east, and a lot of those communities, they're they're hundreds of you know, hundred, hundred and fifty, two hundred years old. And we're we're pushing 80 years now. So uh so but in terms of that growth that has come from a vision of residents who were here who wanted to stay here, and they wanted their community to grow and develop in a in a certain very specific way. And so, yeah, to definitely carry that legacy on is is you know it's important.
SPEAKER_03And there's a different perception of what Henderson is based on kind of when you moved here and where you live. I live in the western part of Henderson, and I you know I deal with a lot of the folks that live work and live down here in the downtown area, and it's it almost feels like two different cities.
SPEAKER_01You western your people. Yeah, I know, I know.
Raw Land Opportunities And Orderly Growth
SPEAKER_03I feel the same way once you pass kind of Gibson Road, then I kind of stop understanding what's going on. But it's um it everyone has their own view of what Henderson is, and that's something that I learned pretty quickly working here at City Hall, because we have we do have a lot of kind of folks that have been here since the onset of the city, and they have expectations of the city kind of maintaining this vision that it had in the 1950s when we became a city, and it's um it's something that I think we do a really good job of of acknowledging the history, but it's also challenging to do with just like the extreme growth of the population. And so it's um but I don't know, I I I like to think that we still kind of in the back of our minds are trying to build upon the city that was originally crafted here down in the downtown area. It's just spread out and it keeps moving and moving. And and I like to say, you we can't close the door behind us, and so we um as much as people would like to sometimes, people are gonna continue to move here if it's a place that seems like a great place to move. And um, we just have to figure out how we how we're how we're fitting them in. That the idea that we're just gonna say no more building, um, unless we completely run out of water and that would stop us. That would stop it, but but we can't tell people we we we can't go to I-15 coming in from California and coming in from Arizona and just put borders up and say no one can keep popping. So we have to we have to prepare for that growth at all times. And and it's and it's a challenge balancing kind of maintaining what Henderson is, you know, a place to call home with the understanding that this gonna keep growing and growing and growing and growing. And so do we have to get more dense in certain areas to allow for more residential opportunities? Um are we is the scarcity of land gonna create a situation where we're running out of water and we need to be kind of building up and not building out, or do we release more land to allow us to continue to kind of grow outwards? And so those are all kind of planning topics that you know, I I work in what we call zoning current planning, and um, those aren't uh the topics that we deal with day to day, but they're always kind of on our mind of you know, are we are we do we need to be more dense? Do we need to be less dense? And um, you know, and what what do our residents want? And and that's a challenge because I think you ask a hundred people, you'll get a hundred different answers. Absolutely. And someone said something in a meeting I was at, and it was um it was very interesting, especially coming from the suburbs of Detroit where I grew up, because I you kind of see it there. And um at some point, southern Nevada and particularly Henderson's gonna have to go from a city of of growth to a city of maintenance. And um, you know, we run out of land and then we're maintaining what we have. And is that transition gonna happen during our career period? Probably not, but it's not that far away unless we release a lot of land. And I think that we could look back at the history of a lot of the cities in the Midwest as kind of barometers for us when we do make that transition of the place where I grew up in Detroit had a very hard time kind of moving away from the city of growth to a city of maintenance when um you know the the auto industry kind of blew up and in Detroit had over two million people between 1950 and 1960, and now it has six six hundred thousand people. A lot of that is because the city couldn't figure out how they um what's what's our next act, if you will. And I think you point to places like Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania that have done that really well. They went from being a city of industry to a city of medical schools and medicine and hospitals, and so they become one of the healthcare leaders. And so I think that our economic development folks, you and redevelopment, us and planning, that's really like if we look at what's the challenge for us in the next 50 years is how do we make that transition? At some point, we're not gonna be growing at the pace in which we've been growing for the last 30 years. And when that happens, what what was that turn into? Uh you know, trying to broaden out our um workforce so not everyone's so reliant on the uh service industry is something that we we talk about a lot. And that's that's again again getting back to this. What's really cool about planning is it's very wide-reaching. And so I could come in every day and have different conversations about different topics all day long. Well, yes, a lot of it is on the built environment and parking and and where the building has to be built. Some of these things do factor into our decision making of you know what's next for the city and what's what's the long-term growth vision for this city. And it's um it's fun to talk about because there's really no clear-cut answer. But um, but I mean the one clear-cut thing that I think we know is people are gonna be moving here because it's a desirable place to live, both for lifestyle, for weather, and um and it used to be way more affordable. So that's that's that is kind of one of the big changes. When I moved here 20 years ago, when I was able to move into an apartment, you know, as a single guy moving here, it it would be like triple the price now. So yeah, right. So it's um it's it's not without its challenges, but I think that we we know that we are going to continue to grow until we run out of land, basically. And and that's a that's a conversation for a different podcast.
SPEAKER_01It's a whole different uh whole different ball of wax. That uh, but like you said, it's a but at that by that point in time, it's not necessarily growth as more, like you said, looking more inward and maintaining what we have and being able to maintain the infrastructure that has been put in place and uh be able to maintain the businesses that are here and be able to service everybody that has made that decision is in, but you know, understand that it's gonna there may be a time that slows, but I I think in in terms of uh I like the the the notion and the thought of you know what is our niche, what is our industry, what is our you know, next thing that we transition to, and so what are those businesses look like that are gonna be moving here that may produce that next big thing, that mix big um um what's the word like hub, uh hub for Henderson, right? Yep. What's our hub? Um, you know, is it education, is it manufacturing, is it, you know, whatever it could be. A little bit of all of those things.
Identity, History, And Growth Pressures
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I mean that's that is what the future holds. But I think, and again, I'm I'm not a native of this place, but I've lived here long enough where I can kind of be a half native. I think that these are things that we've struggled with probably for decades, like moving us away from just being a community that basically is a bunch of people working on the strip. And um, I mean that was some a topic of conversation when I first moved to town in 2005, and it's something we still talk about today. Have we transitioned more into other businesses? Yeah, absolutely. But we have a lot more people, so there's there's only so many jobs on the strip. But yeah, like what does that look like long term? Is it is yeah, it's we're kind of in this limbo right now, figuring that part out. And um, you know, as we day to day are managing the growth that we experience at all times, keeping that in mind of like what what types of jobs are we creating, and do we want to just be so reliant on one industry? And and you know, the service industry is kind of the first one to take a hit. It's you know, we saw what happened during the downturn. We're kind of like the barometer for the country when things start slowing down in southern Nevada, it's usually a sign of things to come nationwide because because our economy is based on other people's discretionary spending, right to a to a certain degree, so or to a large degree. And if that's the case, people aren't coming here spending their money, it's usually a sign that things aren't going well at home. And then I mean, I you know, we we both lived through the the downturn that happened, and there were so many signs of it coming, but it's easy to say that in hindsight. Like, how do you see it coming? And I think if if you and I saw it coming, we could have been we could have shorted the economy billions of dollars and we we'd be doing this podcast on the beach. Exactly. But it's um it's just there's so much that goes into the planning work that we do. Um at the core of it is our development code and you know, doing public input and reaching out to people. But all of these things, our tentacles are wide and varied. Yeah, again, I I that's what I really love about this job is that it allows us to have these conversations that you know, one minute we're talking about how many parking spaces does Whole Foods needs, and the next thing we're talking about are we a city of growth or a city of maintenance. And and that's what our day-to-day kind of is is yeah, you never know where it's going to lead you. And um things are a little more calm here in Clark or in Henderson, I think, than you know. I used to work in a different jurisdiction to our tour north, and there it was kind of the same thing, but you never knew what came in because the types of businesses they saw are just like pretty wild. And so you know.
SPEAKER_01I worked in one of those other uh entities also, and it was very much well, yeah.
SPEAKER_03And I love that about the job of like you never know what your day is going to become and what you're gonna get dragged into. I I mean I have some weird meetings that I have to go to now about some things that have happened at one of our businesses that we have to you know make sure that they're following the rules that we've established. So it's um while it's a little more tame here than it is in some of our like wilder places, it's um I wake up knowing what my calendar looks like for the day, but by the time I get home, my day looks very different than what I kind of anticipated it looking like almost every single day. And and I I wouldn't have it any other way.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that's awesome. I mean, that's when I like I said, I I'm kind of in the same boat with you in the terms of why I got into planning. The planning world is just the the diversity of everything that we're that we're you get the opportunity to be a part of, you know, whether it's businesses or development or you know, whatever it may be, the long-range planning aspect of it. We know there's a there's definitely a variety, wide variety of of topics that we get uh brought into and are engaged in to help the community grow. And so that's why I appreciate you taking the time to sit down with me and talk a little bit about the planning aspect of the city, uh especially for our businesses, that hopefully they they get a little bit of an insight of you know what it is that planning is for and what it planning is about, and not that we're out, you know, that planning's there to you know prohibit or restrict or deny anybody from coming into the city, but you know, that it has a purpose in the growth and development of our city um and and helping to establish kind of a a basic maintenance, you know, basic uh you know order to you know two things and to provide a little bit of ground groundwork that we can work from to help you know help the community grow in a in a logical and a more uh kind of natural way, also. That's perfectly put. And so yeah.
From Growth To Maintenance: What’s Next
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I'd leave you with, you know, I always like to joke, and you know, you and I are both sports people, and so I always like to joke that we we're kind of like the referees in a basketball game. And the development community is on one side and the general public's on the other. And if kind of like a referee in an NBA game, if you know who I am, if you know my name, it's because I'm not doing my job well. And so if I'm throwing the ball up, calling fouls, and uh, you know, making sure everyone's playing by the rules and everything sm flows smoothly, I'm just the planner over there. Um, if my name's in the paper, you see me kind of getting involved in something, it's usually because I'm I'm getting more involved that I need to be. And so I always like to tell our staff we're we're kind of the referees in the basketball game here. Like we're we're not, we're not no one's here to see us. And so we're just making sure everyone understands what the rules are, they're playing by these rules, and we're just trying to keep our citizens engaged as to what's going on around them, giving them the opportunity to kind of um give us input on those things, but also recognizing that Nevada, just at its core, the frontier spirit of people are allowed to kind of do what they want with their property. But we believe in that strongly, except for there are some parameters, yeah. You know, going back to the purpose of zoning to protect the residents around you because they're owed these rights to do what they want and they don't have to have you impact. So we're very proud of the fact that we like to look at ourselves as not slowing things down. We're just trying to kind of help people through the process and giving neighbors the opportunity to understand what's going on around them is kind of the core function of what we do.
SPEAKER_01And I guess for for my listeners out there, for our listeners out there, is that uh if anything, if you take anything away from today, maybe just take away just be engaged, be a part of the process, be uh be willing to step up and share your voice and uh share you know your thoughts on uh on how things are working for you, uh especially as in the business and the business community, is like, you know, we're all as uh Andy mentioned here, we're always looking for input on how what can we do better, what can we uh what could we improve on, and uh so that way we can make the process more uh more better.
SPEAKER_03It's really well put. I think you know, traditionally you see, and I've been managing our planning commission process now for a few years, the people that come to these meetings to voice anything is usually someone that's really upset about something happening nearby. And I understand it's a lot of time and energy to come down here and it's intimidating to speak, but we have a lot of different avenues for public input. And um, we love hearing from people just to say, hey, I really like what is going on here. We don't usually hear from those people.
SPEAKER_01No, unfortunately not.
SPEAKER_03But uh, but I don't think that's unique to us. I think just you know the squeaky wheel gets the grease. But um it would be nice sometimes to hear from the folks that are kind of in support of something because um like I said, most of the time when we hear from someone, it's because they're really upset about something. But but the thing that makes me feel better about that is once we engage with that individual, almost all the time we're able to explain to them why we're making certain decisions, why we're doing certain things. And um, you know, these people are allowed to do X, Y, and Z development, but we want to do more protection for the residents by you know, if it's like a restaurant or drive-thru, making sure that the the talk box isn't too close to the home or something like that. And so we're trying to help people develop their businesses, but also with a caveat of helping the nearby residents feel protected and and and doing that balance is is really challenging, but um you know, the more people we hear from, the easier our job is. Um, I mean the longer our meetings go, but that's fine. It's um they're getting paid up there, so well, we've moved a lot of the meetings earlier too. So yeah, you know, the days of back in our early days of our career going to planning commission to two in the morning, yeah. Those days are kind of over things. Yeah, but um it's you know, we don't want our public hearings to turn into what I see from my planning friends in other parts of the country where they're they have six hours of people coming to you know complain about a project, right? But we do get some of that, and I think that it that means that we're doing the process right. Like we we don't want to stop people from coming to our meetings to express their concerns. I think it's really important to hear from everyone. Yeah, but um but but like I said at the beginning of this, it's it's always nice to hear from someone that just says, Hey, I really like what's going on. I just know naturally they're not as apt to kind of take time out of their day to come say that. And that's why we're trying to take public comment from people in all different ways, whether you want to send it to us through social media, or you want to send it to us through an email, or you want to put it on the phone, or even type it out on a postcard and send it in. Um, you know, we're we're always looking for feedback from people and we we understand that people are very busy in this town. A lot of people are working, you know, odd hours, or a lot of people are working multiple jobs. And so um we take kind of public input, we take it very seriously just because we know how much effort it is for people to show up and to express those things.
SPEAKER_01And that's why I always for uh my listeners out there that that uh we do have our website also. If you go to for redevelopment agency, we have if you want to reach out to us and tell us how wonderful job we're doing, uh, you can always go to cityofhenderson.com slash redevelop that and you can uh leave your comments uh there also or uh the cityofenderson.com slash redevelopment. I think also we have a place so you can leave comments, but uh so yeah. But well thanks, Andy, for uh sitting down with me and uh sharing your thoughts and input and feelings and uh about planning in the Henderson.
SPEAKER_03I appreciate it. Yeah, happy to do it again anytime you want.
The Referee Metaphor And Public Voice
SPEAKER_01All right, thanks until next time. Welcome back from that great interview with Andrew Rother. Hopefully you enjoyed the insights and happenings uh behind the scenes in the planning world and all the things that uh go uh go on behind uh to make projects happen here in the city. You know, planning is just the first step in a lot of those processes, and so uh we um are glad that he sat down and be able to kind of explain some of those processes and applications that you might be involved in. And you know, if you have to do a conditional use permit or have to you know come in for your when you get your business license and do zone zoning verification letters and all sorts of other um uh you know events that you might be involved with, uh having to engage with the planning department. So yeah, it was a great interview.
SPEAKER_00There's so much too, I think, on the flip side that um for is great for our residents and business owners to hear about what goes into making the city, the planning that goes in behind the scenes to make sure that you know the businesses are going in the right spot. Residents are, you know, we have complementary businesses uh adjacent to the resident.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it's a lot. We want to make sure you're not uh living next door to industrial complexes. Right. And that the businesses you want to go to are close to where you live. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00So that's there's there's so much to that that I think most people don't that never probably crosses your mind.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, no, it definitely is true. It definitely crossed my mind until I went to school and realized, hey, this is a this is actually a job that I can do. This is awesome. So yeah, a lot of fun. So we yeah, we really appreciate uh Andrew sitting down with us and uh giving us those insights and behind the scenes for us for you. And so um yeah, it's uh amazing process. So so far we've had the building uh business licensing, and we now have had planning in our in our uh tool belt here that uh we've shared with you. The third step in that process where we have uh coming up for you is uh the building department, and you know that's always an exciting one too when you have to go and deal with the building, our building department officials and fire officials and have to go through that process. And so hopefully uh our next interview uh you'll get to hear from uh one of our insiders on uh uh in the building department who will who does his uh a great job in shepherding uh building permits through the process and helping uh helping you as small business owners, developers, and everybody to understand the process and what's needed uh to be able to get you through as smoothly as possible. So look forward to that interview.
SPEAKER_00And I think one of the things that I'm noticing is coming up in both of our interviews so far with Paul and with Andrew is that you know they're available, they're ready to help you. If you have questions, just call, reach out. They always have themselves or teammates that are ready to assist and help get you through the process or answer your questions.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I mean that's definitely one of our goals as a city is to make the process as seamless as possible and as smooth as possible. You know, we we want you as uh businesses to be open and running as uh as soon as we can physically get you open and running. But uh we just need you to come in and work with us, and we will be there more than happy to work with you and uh to make that happen. So yeah, we have a great team here uh at the city, and uh I'm sure that's why a lot of you are here. You bring your businesses to Henderson, is because you love being here. So we and we love having you. So we were just trying to make that as uh smooth and as uh seamless as possible for you. But with that, we hope you enjoyed our interview and our episode today. And again, always if you're looking for uh wanting to ask to come visit you, always please read. out you can go to city of henderson dot com slash redevelop that website and you can uh submit your information there or you can always just email me at Derek dot alan at city of henderson dot com. That's D E R E K dot Allen A L L E N at City of Henderson dot com. And so be sure to subscribe and follow us. We got more coming and a lot more happening. So we're excited to to be here with uh sharing.
SPEAKER_00And join us for Shop Small Saturday, November 29th.
SPEAKER_01Awesome. Thanks and till next time.
