Volunteers to redesign Scotch 80s home

Fundraising 2018 tours will benefit local students

Las Vegas interior designers will get a chance to showcase their talents in a home remodel that will benefit the educational needs of underserved kids.

The Las Vegas Showcase House project is modeled after similar programs that have taken place across the country for more than 40 years, but this is the first time Southern Nevada will participate.

Volunteer interior designers are drawing up individual plans for the remodel that will start in early 2017 and be wrapped up by January 2018. That’s when a six-week ticketed public tour will take place as part of a fundraising effort for Core Academy, an in-school and after-school program for students going into sixth grade that helps them through high school and beyond.

The mission of the Las Vegas Showcase House is to re-establish Las Vegas as a hub of design and as an incubator for world-class architecture, interior design and landscaping by restoring a classic property, using today’s technology and bringing together the nation’s top design talents. The intent is to celebrate and foster appreciation for architecture and design, as well as contemporary thinking in these fields, by encouraging education, preservation and sustainable modern living as represented in Las Vegas, according to organizers.

The idea for doing a Showcase House in Las Vegas came from Cray Bauxmont-Flynn, a Southern Nevada interior designer, architect, and developer who’s serving as president of the nonprofit entity and has worked on other fundraisers with designers.

“I thought what could be done next to bring together the design community since we have an exceptional amount of local talent that does projects internationally and shows that Las Vegas is more than just hotels, casinos, restaurants, and nightclubs,” Bauxmont-Flynn said. “We have phenomenal design talent that surpasses anywhere else nationally.”

The home, on Oakey Avenue in what is known as the Scotch 80s neighborhood, is owned by Cyrus and Becky Najafi who have lived there since 1994. It was built in 1961 and measures about 5,400 square feet on the first floor while the basement takes up about 1,000 square feet.

“It’s about transforming yesteryear into a beautiful modern masterpiece of today,” said Kimberly Joi McDonald, a member of the executive board and development chair of the Showcase House. “Anyone can make anything beautiful, but we want to make sure function is accommodated first and beauty second.”

Nineteen designers, including some nationally known ones, will participate in the project. Each will design at least one of the 19 rooms in the home, Bauxmont-Flynn said. The designers will submit concepts for three different rooms without their name attached, and in September an advisory board will select the designs that work best and announce them in October.

“They will look at all the various designs and see where the cohesiveness is and where the story plays out and what works best with what rooms since they are integrated with one another,” Bauxmont-Flynn said. “If you go to Pasadena or San Francisco and look at their Showcase Homes, you have no