* -- The working title of Soylent Green.

Since if I have to type the words "Columbia Sussex" or "Tropicana" one more time today I think I may barf (especially after a blog glitch obliterated an hour's work, like President Hillary Clinton calling in a nuclear strike on Iran), any change of subject is welcome.

Among the items scheduled to be heard by the Clark County Planning Commission today -- and by the full commission next month -- is a casino-resort proposal put forward by Lifestyle Holdings LLC. It proposes to erect multiple condo-hotel towers on this 9.4-acre site, embraced by the Desert Inn arterial, Highland Drive, and the Union Pacific railroad. (From the looks of it, vehicular access won't exactly be a snap.) At least the land was a relative bargain, at $1.1 million/acre.

Public-records searches turn up a thicket of foreign and domestic LLCs, but all roads eventually lead to Miami-based WSG Development Co., which boasts an impressive portfolio of condo and shopping mall projects. I can't find a page for it at VegasTodayAndTomorrow.com, which should tell you how far this project has flown under the radar. If Mark Adams hasn't heard of it, then it's a stealthy project indeed. "Lifestyle," as the project is called, would occupy the brown patch marked "Proposed Resort" behind Trump Towers on his master map.

The nitty-gritty is that Lifestyle proposes to build three towers (two of them 620 feet tall, the third 474 feet). Floors 46-50 of the two principal towers would consist of 98 condo units, and both towers would be connected by a bridge at the 44th/45th-floor levels. There would be 2,650 hotel rooms, 75,000 feet of casino space and a like amount of meeting rooms.

Entry to the property would be from Highland Drive and Desert Inn Road (not from the arterial). Given the small footprint of land, it's no surprise that the towers would be smack-dab against (read: 21 feet back) the surrounding streets. Since WSG has no casino experience to date, its a reasonable surmise that casino operations would be farmed out, at least on the interim basis that we saw at the Hard Rock Hotel.

The catch? Clark County's planning staff has given Lifestyle the thumbs-down. Their reasons include the big-ass variances Lifestyle would require including a 520% increase in the allowable building height and a rezoning of the property to place it within the nearest Gaming Enterprise District. Or, to put it another way, the GED would sprout a "thumb," jutting out into the middle of a low-rise business district.

The fact that Lifestyle would be an isolated development in a light-industrial district, cut off from direct access to the Strip, also factors into the recommendation. Among the requests made of WSG Development, should the project get approved anyway, is the creation of a pedestrian bridge across the railway.

After all, if you're staying at Trump Tower (no casino there), wouldn't your logical course of action be to wander out the back door, maybe stop off at the Love Boutique on charming Industrial Road and then cross the train tracks to gamble at Lifestyle?

Other non-governmental, but quite practical considerations are the convoluted route one would have to take to reach Lifestyle. And with the Desert Inn overpass to the north and the Union Pacific snug up against Lifestyle's eastern flank, the noise-abatement problems could be Herculean.

Still, you have to give WSG Development an "A" for ingenuity. Unless somebody feels like parting with 10 acres of Strip land at a steeply discounted price, out of the goodness of their hearts, WSG has at least brainstormed a low-cost way to try and get into the game. Who knows? With bits and pieces of land just to the southwest being snapped up for possible hotel development, WSG might even be ahead of the curve -- should Clark County come around to the idea of a "Strip West."

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