Back when it opened in 1993, the Holy Cow! was Las Vegas' first brewpub. (Now, of course, we have several, plus a bunch of pubs selling other people's craft brews and imports -- see Pubs & Microbreweries. There's a twofer offer on the local Sin City brew at CouponsinVegas.com). Prior to that date, the property had operated from 1976-1988 as Foxy's Firehouse, a casino that boasted a half-sized crap table, as a nostalgic reader wrote in to remind us.
Located at 2423 Las Vegas Blvd., on the northeast corner of the Sahara intersection, the Holy Cow! was particularly notable for the 14-foot sunglass-wearing Holstein cow that sat atop the entrance. It was a popular locals hangout owned by the Big Dog's Hospitality Group and featured a long dark wood bar with a 9-tap milk-can tower that poured the five house beers, alongside Miller Lite and nitrogen-pushed Guinness. The brewhouse and fermenters for the 10bbl Century brewing system were located on the second floor. The joint served decent bar food and was featured in the popular Discovery Channel reality series "Casino Diaries", when one of the subjects was being filmed playing there one night when a power failure struck, but that's another story...
We were saddened when the Cow closed on March 22, 2002, and awaited its future fate with curiosity. Subsequently, nothing continued to happen until Ivana Trump (who you can thank for the pink awnings) showed up with a plan to turn the site into a condo tower. Whether she was serious about the plan or simply wanted to annoy her ex-husband, who was then building his own tower down the street, history doesn't relate, but the timing coincided with the bottom beginning to fall out of that particular market and a sense that Vegas was already getting condo'd-out, and her plan came to nought.
More nothing then happened until 2007, when the two-acre site was bought for $47 million by Steve Johnson, an investor-developer from Scottsdale, AZ who owns a bunch of Walgreens, including the one in front of Palazzo. Johnson's plan was to raze the existing structure as soon as possible and have a new project up-and-running by late 2010. This new project was the somewhat bizarre-sounding concept of a casino/restaurant/tavern/pharmacy complex, complete with a facade of full-motion video wrapping. In March, 2008 a temporary "trailer station" casino operated on the site for some eight hours in order to preserve the location's casino license.
It wasn't until August, 2009 that Las Vegas City Council granted approval for the casino and its 98-foot sign. The plans then released called for a 9,000-square-foot casino with restaurants and retail space, but no hotel and a sign scaled down in size from its originally proposed 500 feet. The expected completion of "late 2010" was repeated, but again, as with so many construction projects around the valley, nothing happened.
Aside from that, the ongoing nothingness at the site continued until earlier this month, when we also noticed some activity. Your query prompted us to dig deeper and we found that on March 12, 2012, the City of Las Vegas granted a demolition license for 2423 S. Las Vegas Boulevard to American Demolition, with a valuation of $49,000 placed on the property. So, we placed a call to that company and got through to the cell phone of owner Jack Paripovich. We left a message inquiring about what was going on, but have yet to hear back.
We also placed a call to Steve Johnson Development, which is listed as having an office adjacent to the former Holy Cow!, at 2427 Las Vegas Blvd. S., but no one answered, while the number we found for an Arizona office was no longer in service. Then, we found a photograph, with no additional information, that was published in the LV-Sun in July of last year and shows a sign out front saying, "All Inquiries. Broker Participation Invited."
So, we figure that the property may well have since changed hands yet again, but with a deafening silence emanating from all sides, as far as what the new plans for the site may be, your guess is as good as ours at this juncture. Something's definitely in the works however -- when we swung by over the weekend to check on progress, almost the entire structure had been razed, with the exception of the pink-awninged facade, which may well also have bitten the dust by the time you read this. As to future plans, as soon as we hear anything, we'll be sure to pass it on.
