But how will they get there?
LVCVA touches on transit issues as it OKS expansion plan
Just before the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority board of directors voted unanimously, as expected, to approve proceeding on a $1.4 billion expansion and renovation project for the Las Vegas Convention Center, some board members offered a few sobering remarks.
With all the hundreds of thousands of people coming to Las Vegas to participate in the dozens of new trade shows the expansion is likely to generate, not to mention hundreds of thousands more who will attend events at the planned Las Vegas stadium, how are the people expected to get around?
Before the 10-0 vote on the project that had its origins more than a decade ago, Las Vegas Mayor Carolyn Goodman asked questions that were on the periphery of both project debates.
“I’ve seen it in San Diego and Orlando,” Goodman said. “The ability to move the people easily from one part of the city to another is critical. Somewhere out there, that needs to be a part of what we’re doing.”
Coming in 2020
Policymakers will have a few years to think about it with the timeline for the completion of the stadium ending in the summer of 2020 and the expansion phase of the convention project scheduled for completion by theendofthatyear.
While the Las Vegas Monorail serves the Convention Center, there’s a lack of surface transportation to the facility, and parking will be diminished with the new exhibit hall. The stadium also lacks parking and nearby transportation.
The Southern Nevada Tourism Infrastructure Committee last year discussed transportation systems as a need, and the Regional Transportation Commission of Southern Nevada recently received authority to explore the construction of a light-rail system. But the system
under consideration would serve the Maryland Parkway corridor from Mccarran International Airport to downtown Las Vegas and wouldn’t touch the convention center or the stadium site.
There was no suspense over whether the board would approve the convention center project when itcametoavotetuesday.two boards, the seven-member Oversight Panel for Convention Facilities in Clark County and the sevenmember Las Vegas Convention District Committee, made unanimous affirmative recommendations for the project over the past three weeks.
Four board members — Henderson Councilman John Marz and
casino industry representatives Chuck Bowling of MGM Resorts International, Tom Jenkin of Caesars Entertainment and Maurice Wooden of Wynn Resorts — didn’t attend the meeting.
Two phases
Approval of the project, split into two phases, means LVCVA administrators can go to work seeking a construction manager that will be responsible for delivering the first phase — an $860 million, 600,000-square-foot exhibition hall which will be placed on what currently is referred to as the Gold and Diamond parking lots, most likely
LVCVA
However, he said that he would build the complex as condos listed for rent, and that he’s trying to line up financing.
When seeking out-of-town funding, he said, you “have to sell Vegas before you sell the location.”
The vacant 10-acre site was once home to Falconi’s Tropicana Honda, and during the go-go years last decade, a luxury high-rise complex called Pinnacle Las Vegas was planned there.
The $850 million condo-hotel project by the Falcon Group called for two 36-story towers packed with amenities and linked with three levels of sky bridge suites.
Falcon wasn’t the only one looking to build opulent towers back then: With the valley awash in easy money, investors pitched plans for dozens of
high-rises as part of the “Manhattanization” of Las Vegas.
Marketing materials for Pinnacle show plans for 1,104 units, a hibiscusshaped pool, a quarter-mile garden jogging path, a spa, a putting green, executive loft offices and restaurants.
Moreover, a “digital concierge service” would have let residents “perform an array of tasks with the touch of a button. Summon the valet to retrieve your car, change the temperature of your bedroom, play your favorite music selections, schedule a tee time” and more.
The developers announced in mid2006 that they “secured” the “first level of project financing,” and work crews cleared the site in summer 2007. But like most proposed towers from those days, Pinnacle never came out of the ground.
New York’s Petra Capital Management acquired the site through foreclosure in spring 2013 and sold it months later to current owner Syn-
cept Real Estate in Southern California, property records show.
Syncept chief executive Fangbin “Fred” Jiang referred questions about Victorson’s project to the site’s listing broker, Mark Anthony Rua of ERA Brokers Consolidated, who did not return calls seeking comment.
Pinnacle’s former development director, Michael Bellon, said that lenders wanted his group to presell perhaps 55 percent of the units before they’d release the first pot of funds. The developers found buyers for around 48 percent of the units, he said, but projects began to get canceled “everywhere” in Las Vegas, and Pinnacle’s builders lost their funding and scrapped the project.
Pinnacle would have been “an interesting place to live,” Bellon said. But “timing is everything.”
Contact Eli Segall at esegall@ reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0342. Follow @eli_segall on Twitter.