The plans were all too well known: Build condominium towers in Las Vegas.
The end result was all too common too: the project was going nowhere.
Now, more than 15 years after a developer wanted to build a cluster of skyscrapers in the southwest valley just to leave a giant hole in the ground, another developer is moving forward with plans for a large apartment complex on the site.
Tru Development Co. founder Tim Deters recently told me that he would like to take out a construction loan for a 614 unit rental project in October and then start building the underground parking and the first row of apartments.
The 8030 W. Maule Ave. between Buffalo Drive and Cimarron Road south of Beltway 215 is set to cost nearly $ 200 million, he said.
Deters’ plans go back long before the current real estate boom that hit Las Vegas last year with rapidly rising sales prices and rents, shrinking inventory levels, and affordability concerns.
But his project is located in a district that has been growing rapidly for years that would close an area that was long a failed relic of a past real estate craze and little more than an untouched crater with a partially built garage.
Like other apartment developers in the valley, Deters is planning many amenities in his project. He said there would be a 12,000-square-foot clubhouse with a high-end gym, and that the first phase of the complex would have a pool area with cabanas, a beer garden, and an outdoor exercise facility.
Deters said the overall housing market is “very active right now” and that developers are still not building enough to meet demand. He also pointed to higher development costs, when they go up, rents go up too.
Overall, rents are rising at breakneck speed in the current housing craze. The typical rental rate for a Las Vegas home rose nearly 23 percent year-over-year in July, compared to a nationwide increase of about 9 percent, reported listing site Zillow.
Las Vegas rental growth was the second fastest among the 50 metropolitan areas in the report, up from a 6.7 percent annual increase in January.
Still, new housing projects are being rented out and a lot of people have moved here, noted Deters.
“Everything is going very well at the moment,” he said.
Like countless other places in the valley, something else should have stood on Deters’ property so far: In this case, it was a project called the Spanish View Tower.
During the mid-2000s bubble, developer Rodney Yanke acquired the property and announced that Spanish View, comprised of three 18-story condos, would “beat anything in Las Vegas” and would be “the foundation for high-rise living” in Western United States
It was one of many planned high-rise buildings from the “Manhattanization” of Las Vegas and one of many oversized projects from this time that were never realized.
Work teams excavated the site and began building an underground car park. However, construction halted in mid-2006, according to creditors, who filed court filings to drive the project into bankruptcy.
Ultimately, a project lender bought the property out of bankruptcy, but the lender also went bankrupt. Las Vegas realtor and investor Jack Woodcock, another project lender, acquired the property through foreclosure in 2012 and later partnered with Deters for the apartment complex.
Clark County commissioners approved the project plans in late 2017.
Developers have been building apartment complexes across the valley for years, though no one has built a high-rise apartment building in the Las Vegas area in more than a decade.
Can you blame them, given what happened last time?
Contact Eli Segall at esegall@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0342. Follow @eli_segall on Twitter.
