Question of the Day - 18 August 2020

Exactly a year ago, in what sounded to us like a throwback to the castles-in-the-sky announcements of vast new developments from 1990s' Las Vegas, a real estate investment trust called Bleutech Park Properties publicly unveiled plans to build a $7.5 billion "smart city" somewhere in Las Vegas.

The mixed-use development was to showcase the entire (fanciful) range of smart-city technology: renewable energies from solar/wind/water/kinetic, autonomous vehicles, artificial intelligence, augmented reality, automated multi-functional designs, drones, the Internet of things, security handled by robots and around-the-clock biometric systems, flooring that would capture and reuse energy from human movement, wearable technology, supertrees designed to reduce carbon emissions, water intake, and waste. The proposal even mentioned "self-healing concrete" for the smart buildings. BleuTech Park plans also included affordable and luxury housing, office and retail space, hotels, and entertainment venues.

The proposal was similar to other privately funded smart-city test sites, like Quayside in Toronto that Google’s sibling company, Sidewalk Labs, is developing, and Nevada-based Blockchain LLC, which announced even more ambitious plans to build a 60,000-acre city near Reno. Bleutech claimed that it would break ground on its smart city in December, only four months in the future; construction was is projected to take six years to complete.

Though it all sounded cool enough, we weren't exactly betting the under on the timeline.

Still, in November, Bleutech announced that it had made a deal to purchase 210 acres of vacant land at Cactus Avenue and Las Vegas Boulevard S., a few blocks south of South Point. The sellers told the Las Vegas Review-Journal that the land was "under contract" for roughly $1.5 million an acre, or $315 million for the whole parcel. And they sounded breathless in their hopes and ambitions for the sale of the property and the project that they seemed convinced would be built there.

In a related development, however, one of the principals in Bleutech was accused of using a fake engineering firm and a falsified resume to win a $33.3 million construction contract for a large retail complex in Homestead, Florida. The accusation also included a charge of wage theft, after failing to pay dozens of employees hundreds of thousands of dollars.

A spokesperson for Bleutech told the Miami Herald that the issues with the Florida development were "irrelevant" to the Las Vegas project. What was relevant was whether or not Bleutech could close the $315 million purchase of the south Strip property.

But then, late last year around the time that the groundbreaking was supposed to be taking place, Bleutech was sued by a long-time Las Vegas communication consultant and casino public-relations director, who accused the company of breach of contract and lack of payment. Which sounded familiar to us and indicated, at least superficially, that the issues with the Florida development were relevant after all.

By that time, the whole thing seemed to make news only for the trouble it was in. 

The website, bleutechpark.com, is still up, though certainly out of date; the December 2019 groundbreaking leads the description on the single page. But the last we heard anything about it (and we've been keeping our eyes open) was in January when the Las Vegas Review-Journal listed the project as one of the Las Vegas' top ten real estate deals of 2019 -- even though it noted, "The land deal, announced in November, has not closed yet."

With the pandemic throwing a monkey wrench into even the best-laid plans of mice and men, at this point, Bleutech Park takes its place with Desert Kingdom, Titanic, Winter Wonderland, Beverly Hillbillies, London, Voyager, Palace of the Sea, City by the Bay, Moon, and of course Skyvue as one of the more spectacular failures in Las Vegas development history.