Las Vegas Land in Short Supply

This article from today's Las Vegas Review Journal provides an overview of land scarcity in the Las Vegas Valley. Our personal opinion is that in a few short years, once builders have sold most of the inventory being built in the newest master planned communities, traditional housing prices in Las Vegas will soar as new residents continue to move to the Valley filling jobs now being created in the latest casinos and Las Vegas high rise condo developments on the booming Strip.

Land scarcity may drive homebuilders away
By Brian Wargo / Staff Writer
Housing analyst Dennis Smith says don't be surprised if some homebuilders "close their store" in Las Vegas this year.

Smith, president of HomeBuilders Research, predicts one, two or three big public homebuilders will leave the market or merge, and it's not because of a lack of demand. Instead, Smith blames the shrinking supply of land that became even more of a problem in Las Vegas real estate when national builders cut back on their supply of land across the country.

"It looks like it's difficult for the builders to replace the lots they are absorbing," Smith said. "If a builder stopped buying land six months ago, they didn't stop selling houses. Call any builder and it's difficult for them to find land to buy for two or three years out."

Smith said he's been sounding warnings about the lack of available land for traditional housing development in the Las Vegas Valley. About five ago, he said he suggested there was about a 10- to 12-year supply of land remaining within the Bureau of Land Management disposal boundary for a typical builder to develop a typical single-family subdivision. Today, if a single-family homebuilder is not participating in Summerlin, the Focus Property Group master plans in Henderson and Las Vegas or the new Olympia Group master plan in North Las Vegas, where are they going to go to acquire any large number of lots to position them for the future?, Smith asked.

He added that 2006 was another example of the tight land supply. Some builders mistakenly believed land prices would decline as the demand for housing softened, he said.
"If they expected Las Vegas land prices to decline as a result of this change, they were mistaken," Smith said. "If there was a larger supply of land available, the prices would have decreased. Overall, land prices didn't change much. This is due to the overall short land supply. Builders will again soon begin buying land to maintain or increase lot supplies for future communities."

Some builders have also contacted other builders about their Las Vegas land, Smith said. As for Centex Homes, which in January pulled out of a deal to build homes in Henderson, Smith said he wouldn't be surprised if the builder started looking for land again in the coming months.

Downtown Las Vegas Ready to Boom

The following article appeared in today's Las Vegas Sun. We heartily concur with the reporter who has nailed the "new downtown" being created. It is being built by and for locals, not the average tourist, and in just a few years we predict that downtown Las Vegas will be THE place to live!

This is a great place to purchase Las Vegas Nevada real estate. Most of the properties will be high rise condos and lofts with the emphasis on lifestyle and amenities. Please give us a call at 702-985-7654 for complete listings of upcoming Las Vegas condo projects.


February 18, 2007
Downtown's time is now

After years of stalled starts, the area boasts new businesses and real projects under way
By Joe Schoenmann Las Vegas Sun

If Michael Cornthwaite put the philosophy behind his new bar in downtown Las Vegas into a slogan, it might be: It's the locals, stupid.

Sitting on a bar stool in his new Downtown Cocktail Room, which you enter through a gold-painted metal door that looks nothing like any door on Las Vegas Boulevard, Cornthwaite is dead serious. He might be one of the first businessmen in Las Vegas history to go on record to say that he is here for locals, not tourists.

"I've already had people come up to me, repeatedly, and thank me for opening this place," he says. "I already have regular customers ... this is all about feeling comfortable and it's really just for locals."

He emphasizes "real" in talking about his place, Fremont Street, downtown Las Vegas.
"I think as they built all those megamillion-dollar nightclubs, they kind of forgot what was real. I don't care about celebrities. I've met some really cool ones, and it's great to go to a club and see someone if you're from Omaha, I guess. But down here, I just want to be about local people."
He says that, and you're tempted to duck for fear of a lightning strike. Forget the tourists? In Las Vegas?

Here's the not-so-funny thing: That philosophy is the driving force behind what can now be called - with a straight face - the momentum of downtown development. Not only is "It's the locals, stupid" Cornthwaite's mantra, it's the philosophy of the city's business office, which has seen the kind of growth in just the last year that would make any other city slaver.
The idea now is to let the Strip keep its mega-casinos for tourists. Old downtown Las Vegas will be for Las Vegas.

"Locals don't go to the Strip because it's pretty intense," said Scott Adams, the city's business development director. "We think if we create a magnet for locals, create something for Las Vegas, a place where people will work and live, the rest of it will fall into place.
"It's late to come, but it's happening," he says.

That wasn't the idea five years ago, when Mayor Oscar Goodman, flanked by showgirls in Ray-Bans and bodysuits, cut the ribbon on the $100 million Neonopolis. The brainchild of former Mayor Jan Jones, Neonopolis opened with huge fanfare, great hopes and the first-run screening of "Spider-Man," a massive fantasy story for yet another Nevada place to cater to fantasy.
It was downtown's Great Hyped Hope, expecting to draw more tourists to casinos already struggling despite the construction of yet another iffy project, the first Fremont Street Experience canopy.

Hope came and went, just like Neonopolis retailers. The exotic-pet store, sunglasses store, chewy pretzels stand and other places disappeared. The footfalls of security guards now echo in a hulking cinder block structure of a city-owned parking garage. The number of businesses still open could be counted on one hand.

Today, people point to the boondoggle as evidence that downtown is not ready for prime time.
Adams says they are wrong, and that Neonopolis didn't work for two reasons: Timing and execution. A new owner, FAEC Holdings Wirrulla, is working on new plans for the center.
If those owners are smart, they will take cues from Cornthwaite, Adams and the crowd of well-heeled Las Vegans at the champagne-and-stuffed-mushroom gala held a week ago before the groundbreaking for the nearby Lou Ruvo Brain Institute.

Together, they are evidence that weary, scary downtown Las Vegas is being transformed into a place unlike any other in the history of Southern Nevada. It is becoming a true urban center for people who work and live in this community. It will be planned, yet organic in a Downtown Cocktail Room way, with the arts and medicine and a performing arts center.

A real city.

Early one morning last week, seven of Las Vegas' most successful off-Strip developers met to talk about the scope and grandeur of their downtown projects. Richard Worthington, president of the Molasky Group of Cos., was surrounded afterward by men in suits and ties offering thanks for his talk about "green" construction. His unscripted performance had dazzled them in a way that made even the stoniest business operator rethink a lifelong quest for profit above all.
But it was the start of Worthington's talk that spoke to why these developers were sitting in the Celebrity, a small nightclub one block from Fremont Street on Stewart Avenue. It wasn't anything new. Most of the audience believed it when the city's mayor started talking about his vision seven years ago. But belief is one thing; reality is another.

"It's amazing to think of downtown and just how far we've come in just the last five years," Worthington said. "Some of you should be thinking in your mind's eye of what downtown looked like just a few years ago."

It's not just talk, and it's not just happening in the relatively small projects on Fremont Street. From the city's business development office, Adams said that in the last two years, $1.5 billion has been funneled into downtown construction.

"That's real, that's hitting the tax rolls," he said. "We've turned the corner. And in the pipelines is another $10 billion in the next few years."

Even the number crunchers see it. As principal analyst for Applied Analysis, Jeremy Aguerro compiles data on land transactions, office-space vacancies and everything else related to community development. He's the go-to guy to cipher out trends for people like developers, academics and journalists. And this is what Aguerro says about what's happening.
This time, it's for real.

"There is a greater impetus right now, a certain level of momentum," Aguerro says. "I think some of the people who have gotten behind certain projects have brought a level of credibility to the area that didn't exist five or 10 years ago."

But if you live in Queensridge or Green Valley, or suffer the Rainbow Curve commuting from Summerlin, you probably still don't believe it. To you, downtown remains as sorry as always.
So maybe it's time to take a stroll - and sure, you can make it during the day.

To the west of the Fremont Street Experience is the 61 acres of "brownfield" - developer-speak for underused and sometimes contaminated land. These 61 acres were once home to a Union Pacific rail yard - and they are legend to anyone who has kept track, simply due to the number of projects suggested for it over the last five years, and the number of times this "jewel of the desert" has been referenced and hawked and pushed and propped up by Goodman.

In 2005 the city hired Newland Communities to oversee development of the parcel, which then became "Union Park." Within the last year the World Jewelry Center announced plans to build a 54-story headquarters and retail space for jewelry wholesalers.

A week ago famed architect Frank Gehry dug into the ground as construction began on the $70 million Lou Ruvo Brain Institute, which will anchor one corner of the site when it opens in 2009.
The centerpiece of Union Park will be the $250 million Smith Center for the Performing Arts. Half-funded with a tax on car rentals, the center is scheduled to open in 2011 on five acres.
Another four acres or so next to the center will be turned into a promenade.

A bird's-eye schematic of Union Park shows how Newland wants to divvy up and sell the rest of the property. One section is for medical, another for office-plus-residential. Some 3,200 residential units of various constructions will be included. Individual structures include a casino-hotel and a boutique hotel.

Rita Brandin, Newland vice president and development director, said that when Newland announces next month who "wins" the right to build a hotel-casino on the property, maybe, just maybe, nonbelievers about downtown will turn the corner. The company expects as many as 12 proposals from developers.

"Listen, we've been trying to manage what I'll call the 'Oh yeah, right, here we go again' discussion about Union Park," she says. "But we know what really gets the attention is when dirt starts turning, that's when people will believe it."

After walking the Union Park acreage, if the sun is still up and you want to see other reasons people are talking up "the momentum" in downtown Vegas, stroll through the street-level parking lot of the Plaza Hotel and Casino and under the electrified canopy of the Fremont Street Experience.

This is Fremont Street, non-Experience. And sure, even during the day you might find a drug-craving tweaker or two and definitely some homeless people.

But don't let that discourage you. If the sun is setting, don't worry. Even at night, you'll now find tourists with fanny packs and Hawaiian shirts, drinking with straws from three-foot-long booze holders, walking unafraid down this once-verboten area.

Walk on, past myriad little stores, with ancient hand-painted signs, that you will never visit. Pass the empty storefronts. Ignore the torn-up street - or praise it, because that's really the sign of development: Within months a new road and widened sidewalks will be in its place.
We've already visited the Downtown Cocktail Room, so go around the corner and step through the curtained front door of another new tavern, the Griffin. Co-owned by Aaron Chepenik and Jonathan Hensleigh, a screenwriter/movie producer who wrote "Jumanji," "The Punisher" and "Diehard with a Vengeance," stepping into the Griffin is almost like stepping onto the set of a movie - a movie as far, far away from Las Vegas as the moon. To step on these grounds, whose vaulted ceilings give it a hallowed feel, is to understand just how far downtown has come and where it's going.

With wall-sconce lighting and two fire pits surrounded by couches, it's a castle basement or, as many say, a cave. And like the Downtown Cocktail Room, it has no slots. Right away, it's comfortable.

"I guess it seems like a new concept," says bar manager Johnny Hempstead. "But really? It's just a bar."

One by one, nonbelievers walk through the Griffin's door, easing themselves onto a stool or into a sofa. With each sip, they start to believe.

Living on the Las Vegas Strip - MGM CityCenter Condos

Besides adding a spectacular new 60 story casino and mega hotel to the Las Vegas skyline, the MGM CityCenter, located on 66 prime acres between the Bellagio Hotel and the Monte Carlo Hotel on the Las Vegas Strip, will also be home to four outstanding contemporary condo developments from some of the world's most renowned architects. Individually, each of these developments is world-class and innovative, but taken together they will redefine Las Vegas.

The Harmon Hotel and Residences will bring the ultimate in hip and trendy to the MGM City Center project. Designed by Foster and Partners, The Harmon will be operated by Andrew Sassoon's Light Group, one of the leading nightclub and bar management companies in the country, which also operates "Light" in the Bellagio, one of Las Vegas' most popular clubs. The Harmon, a "lifestyle" hotel, will define urban living on the Strip and deliver top-flight services and amenities. Atop the Harmon hotel suites there will also be 228 luxury condo residences catering to the ultra chic and young celebrities.

The Mandarin Oriental Hotel and Residences will mix the prestige of an internationally renowned resort brand and its unparalleled level of amenities with a world-class, five star hotel and residential experience. Located on the south side of the MGM City Center project and fronting the famed Las Vegas Strip, the Mandarin Oriental owners are offered custom-made services and amenities to complement their lifestyle - condominium owners are treated as permanent guests and every whim is catered to. In addition to hotel suites, The Mandarin Oriental Las Vegas will offer 227 luxury residential units on its top floors, and will be the most lavish and costly of the projects four residential elements. The hotel was designed by KPF architects in collaboration with top interior designer Adam Tihany who is noted for extraordinary projects world-wide.

The Veer residential condos will be ideally located in the center of the MGM CityCenter's retail district. The two distinctive leaning glass towers will rise 36 feet and house more than 700 modern loft-like residences. The building's surface will feature horizontal metal blades that slowly change color during the day and that will shade floor-to-ceiling windows from the burning Las Vegas heat. The design will challenge engineers working on the project, but residents will enjoy less obstructed views than would be possible in a more conventional high rise.The towers are the creation of noted German architect Helmut Jahn, known for sleek, ultramodern exteriors and unusual shapes. Jahn said he welcomes the chance to ply his trade in a town that encourages the unexpected. "I don't think we could have done this in Chicago or New York," where urban, residential construction follows a fairly conservative pattern, he said.

Vdara will be the elegant 50 story luxury condo hotel tower rising from the MGM CityCenter project designed by RV Architecture and Rafael Vinoly. In muted shades of ebony, the Vdara tower will feature 1543 fully furnished condo hotel suites ideally located between the Bellagio Hotel and Casino and the CityCenter's main gaming resort. In addition, Vdara will also be a stop on the new The interiors will feature subtle understated decor, wide open floor plans and floor to ceiling walls of glass with spectacular views of the city.

The MGM CityCenter sales center will open to the general public in January of 2007. We are currently accepting reservations for the priority interest list for pre-sale reservations which are scheduled to take place sometime in mid November. To receive updates as they are announced and to register, please go to:

http://www.greatlasvegashomes.com/mgm_city_center_registration.htm

or call 702-985-7654.

“This is not intended to be an offering or solicitation for sale in any jurisdiction where this project is not registered in accordance with applicable law or where such offering or solicitation would otherwise be prohibited by law.” By registering for this project with our office or on our web site you agree to be represented by the Tonnesen Team of Prudential Americana Group Realtors as cooperating broker working with the MGM Mirage as developer.