Big residence club planned for Las Vegas Boulevard South

Friday, May 9, 2003 | 11:13 a.m.

A partnership with 212 acres on Las Vegas Boulevard South says a Florida company has acquired about a quarter of the land and plans to build a residence club development.

South Las Vegas LLC, a joint venture formed by Investment Equity, Las Vegas, and Southern California-based GreenPark Cos. and Zenith Development Corp. Inc., announced Thursday that a company it would not identify is planning a 4,000-unit residence club development as part of the SouthPointe masterplanned commercial development at Las Vegas Boulevard South and Silverado Ranch Boulevard.

A residence club development is similar to a timeshare except that buyers normally acquire a club membership and do not buy equity in the property. With timeshares, buyers acquire a unit for an increment of time, usually by the week, and become equity owners.

The development would be the second vacation ownership property announced in southern Las Vegas in two months. In March, Consolidated Resorts Inc., which operates the Club de Soleil and is developing the Tahiti timeshare on West Tropicana Avenue, announced plans to break ground in September on the $200 million Tahiti Village, a 580-unit timeshare project at Las Vegas Boulevard South and Arby Avenue.

A spokesman for South Las Vegas LLC (SLV) said SouthPointe would include 50 acres for the residence club development, 50 acres for Coast Casinos Inc.'s proposed Southcoast development, which would begin construction in 2004, and 112 acres for an as yet undetermined commercial development.

Few details were disclosed on the residence club development, which would incorporate 30 12-story buildings, SLV said.

Orange County, Calif.-based Zenith and GreenPark, a subsidiary of Warburg Pincus Ventures, New York, formed SLV to master-plan the property. GreenPark specializes in turning environmentally impaired land into productive use.

Portions of the property were used as a gravel pit operation with stockpiled gravel, concrete, asphalt, street piping and roadbase material on the land. In January 2001, the company said it planned to import fill to stabilize the property.