For Las Vegas builders, things are looking up

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Martin Wolk

Chief economics correspondent

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The new projects appeal to visitors from southern California who make Las Vegas their vacation home, as well as “empty nesters” who want to be closer to the bright lights and attractions of the city, said Marty Burger, president of Related Las Vegas, which is developing half-a-dozen major projects in the city.

“Where else can you go to a different restaurant every night for 30 days or see a different show every night for 30 days?” he said.

While the city’s increasingly vertical skyline may draw comparisons with Manhattan, the high-rise condo towers actually are following more of a south Florida model, said Bruce Weiner, president of Turnberry Associates.

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Weiner said Turnberry is hoping to duplicate what the privately owned company did in south Florida beginning in the late 1960s, when company founder Don Soffer acquired 785 acres of swampland and proceeded to build the mostly vertical city of Aventura, now one of the state’s wealthiest communities.

Weiner said the market in Vegas wasn’t really viable until the Strip moved upscale in the 1990s, beginning with Steve Wynn’s Mirage and continuing with high-end casino resorts like the Bellagio, Venetian and the just-opened Wynn.

Still, when Turnberry announced plans for its first four towers in 1998, many observers were skeptical, Weiner said. Las Vegas had not seen a new residential tower in 25 years, and Turnberry’s initial sales office in a double-wide trailer did nothing to dispel the doubts.

“People said, ‘Do you know how many people have been into this town in a trailer?’” he recalled. “You had to prove to the skeptic that you meant business.”

Now many of those skeptics have turned into believers, leading to a new wave of development on the Strip. Ritter, of Focus Group, figures that even if most of the announced condominium towers are never built, developers will invest $10 billion in the Strip over the next five to seven years, on top of the $15 billion that has been poured in since Wynn ushered in the latest boom by opening the Mirage in 1989.

“It’s an unparalleled phenomenon,” he said. “Personally I’ve never been a very big fan of the Strip. I’ve always felt the Strip was a little bit trashy and tacky, but that is really changing, and I think it will change more.”

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