Henderson plans to revive Pittman neighborhood, add grocery
The Pittman neighborhood in east Henderson will soon be seeing the fruits of a five-year plan put together by the city’s community-development department.
The city used a $60,000 grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundaton and Reinvestment Fund to create the plan aimed for solving some of the area’s problems, according to Stephanie Garcia-Vause, the city’s director of community development.
“When we took a look at data and statistics, we could see that two ZIP codes in our community, 89011 and 89015, if you take a look at health outcomes, they’re different,” she said. “It’s almost a community of halves; when you take a look at the number of people who have a college degree, it is roughly half in these areas as it is the rest of our community.”
The median income in the Pittman area, which is south of East Sunset Road, between Boulder Highway and Pabco Road, is $38,495, or 40 percent lower than the citywide figure of $63,830, according to a study by the city. The 89015 area, according to the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting statistics, also had Henderson’s the highest rate of crimes involving assault, robbery, rape and homicide from 2014-15.
The two ZIP codes also have the highest percentage of residents receiving temporary assistance in the Henderson area. More than 15 percent of residents in the Pittman neighborhood have an income below the poverty line as of January, according to the U.S. Census Bureau and the city’s community-development department.
“The grant spurred us,” Garcia-Vause said. “We knew we had to do work.”
Henderson officials applied for the grant nearly two years ago. Since , the city has surveyed residents and held town halls to get feedback about issues.
“People said, ‘You know, we like our neighborhood; we find it difficult, though, to get to shopping for groceries,” Garcia-Vause said. “When you take a look at what’s in the general vicinity, it’s pretty sad because you’ve got liquor stores.”
Officials are aiming to attract a grocery store to the area, improve transportation, add new housing, rehab older homes, improve roads and sidewalks and introduce a community gathering space.
“We envision seeing some incremental changes and then being able to see some revitalization from an economic standpoint,” Garcia-Vause said. “There has been a lot of effort going on in downtown for the last, I think, almost 20 years. There hasn’t necessarily been the same level of planning going on in the rest of the eastern corridor outside the downtown.”
Garcia-Vause said her department is working with the College of Southern Nevada to introduce six- to eight-week night courses aimed at making residents more “marketable” to employers and ultimately raising median income.
Daniel Krebeck, who bought his house in the neighborhood in the early 1980s, said the issue of low owner-occupancy rates leads to some houses being run-down by renters. While 62 percent of Henderson homes are occupied by the owner, 52 percent are owner-occupied in the Pittman area, according to a Census Bureau survey.
For others, the idea of an added police presence would be welcome in the neighborhood that one resident described as “scary.”
“I would say around here at night, no, I would not walk around here,” said Caroline Miller, who has lived in the Pittman area for three years .
Early sidewalk and road-repair projects are underway, Garcia-Vause said, and more improvements are on the way.
“We have more than 5 years wroth of work that’s been outlined,” she said. “So it’s finding the time and phasing it in when we can pay for it.”
Contact Diego Mendoza-Moyers at dmendozamoyers@viewnews.com or call 702-383-0496. Follow @dmendozamoyers on Twitter.
Online
For more information about the Pittman Neighborhood Revitalization Plan, visit tinyurl.com/pittmanplan.
