You’re right on all counts. It’s an excellent question and an interesting, though brief, story about the special case of The Lakes, Nevada.
The Lakes, like Summerlin and Desert Shores and Sequoia Villas and Ashton Park at the Vistas and Jerusalem Artichoke Townhome Estates that we just made up, isn’t an official town, city, or township, just a small master-planned community on the west side of the city.
As we wrote in our big answer about the Lakes in general (8/21/10), Lake Sahara, the centerpiece of the subdivision, was excavated in the early 1980s and completely filled in by 1985.
Five years later in 1990, Citicards, the credit-card division of Citibank, located its payment-processing center nearby. The official address is 8725 W. Sahara Avenue, The Lakes, NV 89163.
At the time, one of Citibank’s requirements for opening the credit-card center in Las Vegas was receiving the special mailing address in an attempt to avoid the "negative connotation" of mailing credit-card payments to Las Vegas. This move was perceived by many locals as yet another example of disrespect to the city’s identity.
But the post office acquiesced to the unusual request, pointing to the large volume of mail the center would send and receive; for its part, local government cited the large number of jobs the center would create.
Today, The Lakes has two zip codes: one for residences, the other for Citicards.
