The last time this column featured coverage of the 2-acre lot located at 2417-2413 Las Vegas Boulevard South was in mid-November 2013, when a reader requested a history of the Holy Cow. Las Vegas’ first brewpub, it debuted in 1993 and operated on the spot until March 2002.
For the next three years the building sat derelict, falling into a state of worsening disrepair, until apparent hope arrived in the unlikely shape of Ivana Trump. The ex-Mrs. Donald announced that she was going to build an 82-story luxury residential project, reminiscent, in the renditions, of a giant silver lipstick case. Prices for the units were to range from $550,000, up to $35 million for the penthouse. Ivana felt confident that she could sell her exorbitantly priced units to business executives and celebrities, because in her words, they all "love Nevada, because of its weather." Construction was set to commence in 2006, with a completion date of some time in 2008.
Whether the former Mrs. Trump was truly serious about this project, or if her grand statements and gaudy pink sales-office awnings were merely a calculated effort to annoy her ex, who was in the process of realizing his own Las Vegas dream a few blocks to the south, we will likely never know. If serious she was, then Ivana Trump was the victim of some unfortunate timing, as her entry into the world of Las Vegas real estate coincided with the beginning of the apocalypse for the Strip condo market. By 2007, those pink awnings on her sales office were about all there was to show for the efforts of the one-time interior designer for the entire Trump real estate portfolio. Realizing her miscalculation, that year Ivana Trump sold the site to Aspen Highlands Holdings LLC -- a privately owned Utah-based development company whose principals include Albuquerque architect George Rainhart and Arizona businessman Steve Johnson -- for $47 million.
Johnson is particularly well known for building Walgreens stores (including those located near MGM Grand and Palazzo) and he announced that his plan was to raze the existing structure as soon as possible and have a new project up-and-running by late 2010. His dream was to realize the "only in Vegas" concept of a casino/restaurant/tavern/pharmacy complex, with a 500-foot-tall facade of full-motion video wrapping. To show he meant business, in March 2008 a temporary "trailer station" casino operated on the site for some eight hours in order to preserve the location’s unrestricted gaming license.
But what came next was a whole lot of nothing, at least until late summer 2009, when the Las Vegas City Council granted approval for a scaled-down version of Johnson's vision. The new incarnation was to feature a 9,000-square-foot casino, with restaurants and retail space, and some seriously scaled-down signage. There were murmurs of expected completion in "late 2010," but the inactivity continued until March 2012, when the City of Las Vegas granted to American Demolition a license to obliterate what remained at 2423 S. Las Vegas Boulevard. At this point, a valuation of just $49,000 was placed on the property.
Fast forward to our recent receipt of your question, which spurred us to revisit this project's progress. Our renewed digging paid off when we came across a letter, addressed by FNBN Aspen, LLC, to the City of Las Vegas Planning Department back on June 18, 2013, politely requesting an extension of time on the approval deadline for its entitlement application, which was set to expire on August 15 of that year. The main reason cited for the delay was the fact that Walgreens, the anchor tenant, had delayed commencement of its construction due to the "current slump in the economy" and was now shooting for a March 31, 2015 opening date. This had had a knock-on effect on the developer's ability to move forward with the vertical construction of the complex, which in the letter was estimated would not get underway until "April/May 2014".
The written request was for the approval-date deadline to be moved to August 5 of this year. This turned out to be a pessimistic prediction (albeit an understandable one, given the economic climate in general and the history of this site in particular), since we can report that construction is already well underway. It was too dark and too dodgy (it's not the most salubrious intersection in town), plus it was raining yesterday, but we sent our intrepid publisher out into the night, armed only with his iPhone, and the image posted below is proof that this whole unlikely enterprise really is happening, at last.
Newmark Grubb Knight Frank is the brokerage firm here in town tasked with renting out the space and their retail lease offering does an impressive job of selling the location, noting the imminent debut of its hip new neighbor SLS, not to mention the ongoing boom in convention traffic (the site is close to the the Las Vegas Convention Center, which is about to undergo a $2.5 billion upgrade), and the anticipated phoenix-like resurrection of nearby Echelon Place as Resorts World Las Vegas. The latest word on the controversial LED frontage sign is that it will be 137 feet tall, while the 41,500 square feet of retail space will be spread across two stories and will also feature a three-level parking structure (NGKF has a different rendering accompanying the official listing for this property on their website, which suggests a less garish design that we think may be a more up-to-date representation of what's actually being built). The latest estimated delivery date is 1st Quarter 2015, and for once, we can actually see that happening (although we're not sure about the concept of a "Pepsi Casino," which one of the renderings in the sales package seems to suggest).
