Yes. There is, in fact, a building in the back parking lot between the Mirage and TI. It’s closer to TI — you can see it from the south side of Spring Mountain, closest to the Fashion Show Mall. The building, a 36-unit apartment complex built on six-tenths of an acre, is called Villa de Flores apartments.
The owner of the property at the time the Mirage was under construction refused to sell. This led to an intense legal battle between him and Steve Wynn in the mid-'90s. The owner of Villa de Flores apartments wanted to rebuild the property as a hotel-and-timeshare tower. Wynn offered $3 million, but the owner refused to settle for less than $6 million. Wynn declined to increase his offer and ended up successfully suing on the grounds that the proposed hotel was way too big for the small piece of land and would violate building codes and cause traffic congestion. The 1997 conclusion to the lawsuit basically continued the status quo, however, with the apartment block staying where it was and the plans for a hotel timeshare tower never reaching fruition. Wynn didn’t gain control of the land.
The exact fate and future of the building remains unclear. At some point there was supposedly a $4 million sale by the owner of Villa de Flores to an investment company, but details remain murky and no one at Villa de Flores was willing to enlighten us. The apartment building is still standing and does have apartments available for rent, although there's a long waiting list. Some remodeling work is being done to the apartments, but there has been mention that the long talked-of hotel-timeshare is still going to be built. Other sources say there may be some negotiations going on for a sale between MGM Mirage and the current owner.
In conclusion, this is one of those riddles that may never satisfactorily be solved. Las Vegas and property ownership have a long and convoluted history on account of the law of eminent domain, a principle enshrined both at federal and state level. In a nutshell, it's the right of the government to seize private property for public use. In 1876, the Nevada Court affirmed that the power of eminent domain may not be used for a strictly private use. It also concluded, however, that anything that "tends to enlarge the resources, increase the industrial energies, and promote the productive power of any considerable number of the inhabitants of a section of the state, or which leads to the growth of towns and the creation of new sources for the employment of private capital and labor, indirectly contributes to the general welfare and to the prosperity of the whole community," may be properly called a public use.
Back then the major industry in Nevada was mining, so the ruling was considered applicable to related projects such as the operation of a railroad. In recent times, however, particularly the mid-1990s, the law has been applied to the casino industry and its needs and has given rise to a number of high-profile disputes, including the seizure of land belonging to the Pappas family downtown to build a parking garage for the Fremont Street Experience, a case that was finally settled in 2004 with a compensation payment of $4.5 million to the family. A second case dating back to 1994, which involves land behind the Stratosphere Tower, is still in litigation today.
Following some controversial recent cases elsewhere in the country where private property was seized essentially for private business interests, the legitimate parameters of eminent domain are currently being debated at a federal level in Washington, D.C.
