Tiny Vegas home sits at center of housing craze

“It’s happening. It’s all going to keep going,” said Paul Miotke, Corchuelo’s agent. “The one thing we know is it’s not going down in value.”

Few would have said that about Corchuelo’s block just a few years ago. In the 1950s, the neighborhood was home to card dealers and strippers who used to sunbathe in the buff to avoid tan lines, giving the place its nickname, Naked City. By the 1980s it had become a pocket of prostitution and crime.

Now the streets around Corchuelo’s home are lined with a mix of small, well-kept homes, residential hotels and public housing. Visitors are as likely to see speculators and real estate agents cruising the place as pimps.

In 2000, the city removed building height and parking restrictions in an attempt to lure development to the area. It took a few years, but builders eventually began to eye Naked City for what planners call “higher-intensity housing units.”

“We had to expect there would be developers seeking to consolidate smaller properties,” said Margo Wheeler, the director of planning and development for the city of Las Vegas.

That’s where Georgia James comes in. She is a Prudential agent who cruises the neighborhood in her bronze Cadillac DeVille daily. She calls herself the mayor of Naked City and is one of several people coveting Corchuelo’s property. James says she has bought and sold more than 200 properties in Naked City, some of them five times. She’s just finished assembling a 5-acre site on behalf of a group of Miami investors. The plot includes 150 feet of Strip-front property and backs up to Corchuelo’s parcel. It’s listed at $10 million an acre.

James says she doesn’t need Corchuelo’s plot, but it would be nice. She thinks his asking price is unrealistic.

“He’s basing it on the highest price paid for the top property on the Strip. If Wynn paid $250,000 a square foot, Manuel wants $250,000 a square foot,” she said. The house next door sold about six months ago for $520,000.

Corchuelo thinks the owner should have held out for more.

James says she hates to see the 64-year-old man waste time.

“He’s so old and he’s sick. He’s going to end up dying, and he has no children or anything else,” she said, as she drives down Corchuelo’s street. “So, what is he trying to do? They can build around him.”

It’s been done before, she said, adding that tide of development will likely consume all of Naked City in the next decade. The low-income housing will have to be relocated. The flop houses will be leveled to make way for progress.

“You can’t have slums next to your high-rises. I think the city’s got to find land and give it to these people,” she said. “But this land, this is too close to the Strip, it has too much potential.”

Corchuelo isn’t the only thorn in James’ side. A handful of Naked City holdouts — some residents, some California investors — are keeping her from assembling the neighborhood like a puzzle. She dismisses most.

“It’s part of my job. I’m patient,” she said.

And so is Corchuelo.

“I’ve been waiting 30 years for this,” he said, adding that he knows exactly what he’ll do with the money once he sells.

“Buy another house,” he said.

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