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Transcript of interview with Irene Porter by Angela Moor, December 6, 2009: Planning a city and building homes

Date

2009-12-06

Description

After Irene Porter's father's retirement from the Air Force, the family moved to Las Vegas where her aunt and uncle were involved in the gaming industry. After she married, she and her husband Dick moved to Boston. They moved back to Las Vegas due to the bad economy in Boston. Irene worked for the Clark County Planning Department as a secretary but moved up to doing the work of the director, but without the title nor the pay of that position, so she went to work in the planning department of the city of North Las Vegas and became its director of planning. She was one of only five female planning directors in the country. Next Irene began lobbying at the Nevada legislature and became the first female full-time lobbyist in Nevada. She was fired from North Las Vegas following a secret meeting, and her subsequent lawsuit led directly to the first open meeting law in the state of Nevada. Irene then went to work for American Nevada Corporation, which was developing Green Valley. She became the first female project director on such a construction project. In 1977 Irene began to work for the Southern Nevada Homebuilders Association. She built it into an effective lobbying organization and continued to work as a lobbyist at the Nevada legislature. At the time of the interview, she was the executive director/CEO for the Southern Nevada Homebuilders Association.

Text

Richard C. MacDonald interview, September 20, 2016: transcript

Date

2016-09-20

Description

Henderson developer and Philadelphia native Richard MacDonald is a natural storyteller, and he has stories to tell. The man behind MacDonald Highlands and the Dragon Ridge Country Club first moved to Las Vegas as a young teen with his parents in 1959. After graduating Las Vegas High School in 1963, his parents moved to Hawaii and he enrolled at Nevada Southern University (now UNLV) and supported himself in Las Vegas by selling unfinished houses. His parents convinced him to move to Hawaii, where he attended the University of Hawaii worked with his father selling blocks of pre-developed cemetery lots to Asian buyers. In this interview, MacDonald describes his experience as a white man facing racial discrimination, of Las Vegas as Hawaii's Ninth Island, of earning his real estate broker's license, and of his father's plan to develop and sell Las Vegas property to Hawaiians. Returning to Las Vegas, MacDonald worked with Frank Sala and Chuck Ruthe to obtain his first two sections of Henderson land, which became Sun City MacDonald Ranch and the western part of MacDonald Highlands. He talks of developing Sunridge at MacDonald Ranch on Eastern Avenue and The Canyons at MacDonald Ranch. He also speaks to local prejudice against Hawaiians and to the way the City of Henderson favored Hank Greenspun and American Nevada Corporation. He recalls his twenty-year experience as a developer with the City of Henderson, its planning commission, city manager, city attorney, and city council. He reveals associations with Del Webb and the Del Webb CEO, Anthem, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), the Sultan of Brunei, and polo fields as well as Red Alerts, the Foothills project, and MacDonald Highlands. Along the way he talks of golf course architects and planners and the MacDonald Highlands golf course, his family, the Great Recession, and his current status with the City of Henderson and the Archaeological Institute of America.

Text

Midbar Kodesh Temple Records

Identifier

MS-00714

Abstract

The Midbar Kodesh Temple Records (approximately 1986-1995, 2005-2017) are comprised primarily of event photographs, event programs, and bulletins created and maintained by Midbar Kodesh Temple in Henderson, Nevada. The collection also includes video recordings of the synagogue's groundbreaking in 1995 from local news channels and the 1986 Nevada Study on the Holocaust program.

Archival Collection

McGinley, Ann C.

Ann McGinley grew up in Allentown, Pennsylvania, the third child in a family of four. Her mother was a homemaker and her father was a lawyer. McGinley attended college and majored in Spanish. She earned a master’s degree and taught in Spain for five years. Her brother and his wife were lawyers and she decided to go back to law school at the University of Pennsylvania. McGinley did a two year clerkship for a federal judge, doing research and drafting opinions. She met her husband-to-be during this time and they moved to Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Person

Midbar Kodesh Temple (Henderson, Nev.)

Midbar Kodesh is a Conservative Jewish temple founded in Henderson, Nevada in 1995 by former members of Temple Beth Sholom. Population growth and physical expansion of real estate warranted the establishment of the second Conservative congregation in Southern Nevada, whose name means “Holy Desert.” Temple Beth Sholom was moving to the west side of the valley, and a group of families- the Kaminskys, Goldmans, Rothmans, Simons, Goldsteins, and Feldmans, decided to start a new temple on the east side.

Corporate Body