Off-Strip hotels attracting more conventioneers

Adrienne Packer

Tuesday, Aug. 29, 2000 | 11:15 a.m.

No screaming roller coasters wrap around hotel towers, no jets launch water 250 feet into the sky, and no pirate ships engage in fiery battles below visitors' rooms.

And that just might be why Clark County officials and developers see so much potential for Paradise Road, which has quietly established itself as a corridor that attracts business travelers and conventioneers.

Developers have slowly revamped older motels and gobbled up land for mostly nongaming projects they believe will appeal to visitors who can do without the Las Vegas Strip glitz.

"It's becoming more of the business strip rather than the entertainment strip," Shannon Bybee, director of UNLV's International Gaming Institute, said. "It's becoming a good area to complement the Strip."

Motel owners who once offered hourly and weekly rates are converting their properties into higher-quality buildings.

County code enforcement crews have teamed up with Metro Police and county commissioners to pressure owners of seedy properties to spruce them up. The strategy worked with the Paradise Resort Inn, which received a $4 million renovation from its owners.

"When I took office, I said I wanted to see a renaissance on the east side because it's an older section of town," Commissioner Myrna Williams said. "We want to make sure what's on Paradise Road is inviting and looks good."

County planners and developers agree the projects that have emerged have not only improved Paradise aesthetically, but provided much-needed accommodations for a city that has become one of the top convention locations in the country.

Amerisuites, Embassy Suites and Crowne Plaza line Paradise, which borders the booming Howard Hughes business park. Alexis Park Resort on Harmon Avenue is planning to expand.

Most recently Candlewood Suites replaced an adult bookstore and the Briad Lodging Group plans a hotel-casino that will be built on a former car rental facility site.

"Land has become too valuable for those types of uses," planning consultant Greg Borgel said of the bookstores and rental businesses. "We've seen a sharp upgrade; a steady improvement and quality enhancement of all of Paradise."

The Briad group plans to take advantage of the location of its land on the corner of Paradise and Harmon Avenue -- between McCarran International Airport and the Las Vegas Convention Center.

The 317-room hotel will have a 55,000-square-foot casino and tentatively a small convention center.

"The fact that Swenson and Paradise together form the entry and exit to the airport makes it an attractive site for a tourist facility," said Borgel, who was hired by Briad.

Just down the road, the old Hotel Continental, which for more than a year has been a dilapidated eyesore at the corner of Flamingo Road and Paradise, is in the midst of a major renovation. The Herbst family purchased the 400-room hotel and began rebuilding it last year.

Some give the Hard Rock Hotel, the first major resort in recent years to take a step off the Strip and build east, credit for changing the look of Paradise. Hard Rock representatives admit they took a risk in choosing Paradise over Las Vegas Boulevard.

"(Owner Peter Morton) always had the idea of doing a hotel in Vegas," said Schad Brannon, the Hard Rock's director of marketing in Los Angeles. "We welcomed the idea of being off the Strip. We liked being off the beaten path.

"People told Peter he was crazy; people said it would never make it."

In 1998, less than five years after the Hard Rock opened, it added a second 300-room tower. At the time Morton said the hotel was operating at 100 percent occupancy.

"We hear people say they enjoy the Hard Rock because of its location," Brannon said. "They don't have to deal with the congestion and the madness on the Strip."

Lesa Coder, assistant director of Clark County's comprehensive planning division, said the Hard Rock might one day be seen as the resort that spawned a smaller Strip to the east.

"The Mirage turned heads; it was a catalyst to drive that 'implode it, scrape it and build it bigger and better.' Now we're seeing a slowdown in that philosophy," Coder said. "When the Hard Rock took a walk on the wild side, it went east and said, 'The competition is over here now.' "

The county believes the trend is just beginning on Paradise. Not only do new restaurant rows at Hughes Center and Flamingo link Paradise to the Strip, but the extension of the MGM Grand-Bally's monorail will also veer east.

Williams said the new developments should translate into less crime in the surrounding neighborhoods. But Clark County must strike a balance between the developments on Paradise and residential areas.

"It has to be a benefit to everybody," Williams said. "I think everything is being upgraded and that only helps the residents who happen to live contiguous to those places. We've been focusing on this for several years, but nothing happens overnight."