Thursday, April 9, 1998 | 10:17 a.m.
Groundbreaking for the Sun Plaza office building in downtown Las Vegas has been delayed until August with completion set around October 1999, American Nevada Corp. Vice President Rick Smith says.
Construction was planned to begin this month, but Smith said there have been delays in having the site at 4th and Lewis streets ready for construction. Nevada State Bank, the Las Vegas SUN and the SUN's sister publications will be its major tenants.
"It really had to do with preparing the site for us to come in and develop it," Smith said following an address to the Society for Marketing Professional Services this week. "It was a matter of making sure the tenants who remain in that [existing] building are satisfactorily relocated to another building."
Smith said redesign of utilities and other infrastructure also contributed to the delay. However, the 14-story structure is already about 40 percent leased and will anchor a downtown development surge when completed.
"The demand is very, very high for quality office space in downtown Las Vegas," Smith said.
The $57 million project is a joint venture between Nevada State Bank and American Nevada Corp. and the office space is expected to draw professionals downtown. The city of Las Vegas is contributing $6.4 million as part of a downtown redevelopment grant approved last year.
The Greenspun family controls both the SUN and American Nevada.
Smith said the Sun Plaza will be one of a string of projects that aid in the city's goal of bolstering downtown activity, citing a planned federal building and the 282,000-square-foot retail development Neonopolis as examples. He hopes more are coming.
"We hope this is the beginning of a heck of a lot of competition," Smith said.
Closer to its home turf, American Nevada remains busy developing Green Valley, an 8,400-acre master-planned community south of Las Vegas. Over the next eight to 12 years about 5 1/2 million square feet of commercial space will be developed by American Nevada in Green Valley, Smith said. That development will be aided by the extension of the I-215 beltway to the Green Valley Parkway.
New projects in Green Valley include a Residence Inn by Marriott already operating near the intersection of Green Valley Parkway and Sunset Road and a Courtyard Hotel by Marriott beside it that should open within the next 30 days Also, a two-story 70,000-square-feet office building in American Nevada's 90-acre Corporate Center near Green Valley Parkway and Lake Mead Drive is set to open in October.
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