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| - We moved into the City of North Las Vegas in March of 2004. At that time, NLV and was the fasted growing city in the country with over 5,000 people moving here a month. The City of NLV was expanding and growing, specifically growing northwest. The city lines of Las Vegas and Northwest North Las Vegas were getting harder to discern and people wondered where exactly they were. The Smith's wall said Welcome to your North Las Vegas Smiths but WalMart, WinCo, two blocks away down the same street said "Proud to be part of Las Vegas." To this day, I don't know where the city borders are. I could google it but I prefer to live in a state of confusion.
Two weeks after we moved here I went to The Gun Store on Tropicana that I had read so much about. I told the salesman that I was interested in a gun for home protection. He asked me where I lived and I replied that we had just moved to North Las Vegas. He immediately took the revolver out of my hand and handed me a double barrel shotgun with a laughing smile. Yep, the stigma of NLV was just starting to hit me and I began to understand why the house was significantly cheaper in section 103 on the MLS map than the areas directly adjacent to it: North Las Vegas versus Las Vegas.
Now, granted, there are a lot of older parts of NLV that are unquestionably rough neighborhoods (many would refer to these areas as the "ghetto", especially Elvis fans), but with the massive growth and expansion of the Northwest section of North Las Vegas, just saying you're from North Las Vegas simply isn't enough. Seasoned locals will snicker and those that know the basic stigmas and stereotypes may sneer. This is why an entirely new colloquialism has been developed by those from up here. Hardly anyone that lives near me that I know say that they live in NLV. They all say that they live "In the Northwest" or to go a step further "Northwest Valley, near Centennial/Aliante". It is as if "Northwest Las Vegas" is its own city.
Reality is that the Northwest Valley, which includes a mix of North Las Vegas and Las Vegas sections, could very well stand alone as its own municipality. Trouble would arise from gerrymandering and city budget allocations as that would limit the rather venerable old school City of North Las Vegas to lose its higher valued Northwest residents.
Having lived in the Northwest Valley of the City of North Las Vegas for 11 years now, I can say that I really do love it here. I do kinda miss out on things like voting for Goodman or other City of Las Vegas ordinances, but the value we got on our property enabled us to survive the 2008 collapse virtually unscathed and though nowhere near as many people are moving here as there were back in 2004-2005, new home construction and commercial real estate construction is back at work. We only saw a small handful of homes in our neighborhood fall into foreclosure and now there are no vacant houses in our subdivision. And we don't even have HOA's.
All in all, though there is a definite stigma attached to the City of North Las Vegas, don't believe everything you hear. I recommend it, as long as you stick to the Northwest. ;-)
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