Friday, March 25, 2005 | 10:14 a.m.
Over the past 18 years R.F. Boeddeker has proved skeptics wrong by taking thousands of acres of desert land, building a 320-acre lake, and turning the barren turf into one of the area's premier resorts and master-planned communities.
While Boeddeker, president and chairman of Transcontinental Corp., developer of Lake Las Vegas, obviously enjoys talking about where he has been and how the 3,592-acre community has evolved, he also is a man that is constantly looking toward the future.
Lake Las Vegas is really made up of several parts. The MonteLago Casino, MonteLago Village, golf courses and Hyatt Regency and the Ritz-Carlton cater to visitors, leisure travelers and business groups.
The commercial aspects of the village also cater to the hundreds of residents that already call the resort community home.
There are currently 1,000 homes and another 1,500 houses planned. The plan is for 9,900 houses at completion, which is expected in 2012.
To draw more people out to the community, which is about 20 miles from the Las Vegas Strip, and to expand the resort's visitor base, three more hotels are being planned -- one that will include an 80,000 square foot to 90,000 square foot convention center.
Boeddeker was mum on the names of the hotels.
The planned hotel with convention center would be built on the north shore of the lake, with construction beginning as soon as the first part of 2006. Build out would take about 18 to 24 months, he said.
Plans are to integrate multifamily housing and the hotel onto the site. But what is key to both the hotel and Lake Las Vegas would be the convention center. Currently the resort can host business functions, but not full-scale conventions that would need the space a convention center could provide.
"It gives us an opportunity to bring groups that are larger, that's the objective of this hotel chain, to fill them all (rooms)," Boeddeker said.
Boeddeker said there will be 400 rooms at the hotel.
Two other boutique hotels also are being planned for the resort, with about 150 to 200 rooms each, but those numbers could change, Boeddeker said.
Brian Gordon, a principal at Applied Analysis, said numerous convention and meeting facilities in the valley are looking at adding multipurpose space.
"My guess is they are following what the demands are for this type of space," Gordon said. "They want to make the facility work with demand that is out in the marketplace and at the same time increase occupancy and gaming revenues off the casino floor."
Gordon said the planned hotels and additions are a positive step for the resort that has long dealt with real and perceived issues of accessibility.
"It sounds like a positive concept to develop critical mass to make that facility succeed long term out there," he said. "They are in a unique market position, considering geography and pricing."
Attracting companies for business functions away from the Strip's distractions has been a key strategy in working to fill hotel rooms at Lake Las Vegas.
The Ritz-Carlton at Lake Las Vegas has a "great" occupancy compared to other properties in the company's portfolio, said a spokeswoman for the company, who declined to give exact numbers. The traffic comes from a mix of business and leisure visitors. Officials with the Hyatt Regency could not be reached for comment.
When all the planned hotels are completed, along with the resort's two existing hotels and Vancouver, British Columbia-based Intrawest Corp.'s hotel-condominiums, there will be between 3,000 and 4,000 hotel rooms at Lake Las Vegas, Boeddeker said.
Transcontinental also hopes to attract business groups to its recently completed corporate event site, also referred to as the Oasis Beach Park, nestled into a corner of Lake Las Vegas.
The beachfront park will be used to host private events, getaways and parties and can accommodate 500 to 600 people at a time, Boeddeker said.
Intrawest is now under construction with its second condo-hotel complex, Luna di Lusso. The project's 170 units, priced $300,000 to $1 million, were sold out in hours last fall.
Vierra, Intrawest's first condo-hotel community at Lake Las Vegas has 177 units.
Condo-hotel units are owned like condos but can also be put into a rental pool for a certain number of days each year, earning rent money for owners and managed by a hotel company.
Intrawest has purchased more land adjacent to MonteLago Village for another development, Storied Places, a fractional ownership residence club, now in the planning stages. There will be 33 units built as part of that development.
A fourth golf course is in the works, the Rainbow Canyon Golf Club, a Tom Fazio design that will span the canyon leading to the Rainbow Garden Geological Preserve to the lake's edge and will be positioned near Lake Las Vegas' northeast end.
While the company continues its plans as a resort destination, it also is continuing to develop as a master-planned community, attracting people from retirees to celebrities.
Woodside Homes recently opened its models at the front of Lake Las Vegas and is already under construction with many of its 62 lots -- the first mid-priced single-family homes at the community. Houses started at about $500,000, a bargain compared to many of the resort's multi-million dollar custom homes.
"We have to be careful, we don't want everything high end," Boeddeker said.
Woodside Homes also has a community planned for the north shore of the lake, which will include 38 lots. The homebuilder also has purchased additional land at Lake Las Vegas for future communities that together will have more than 100 houses.
Pardee Homes is getting ready to begin construction on houses at Lake Las Vegas. Luxury homebuilder Toll Brothers also has plans to build at the community, he said.
But Lake Las Vegas isn't necessarily moving away from its high-end real estate niche.
Three mini peninsulas on the south shore are available for corporate and family compounds. The "fingers," as they're also called, are 5 acre to 8 acres and for sale at about $3 million an acre.
So far no one has purchased one of the peninsulas, but Boeddeker said he is meeting with someone next week who is interested in one of the parcels.
As the development of more hotel units and residential units continues, there will be a need for further commercial development, both retail and offices.
On the east side of the resort there are plans for 278,000 square feet of high-end offices along with retail space with the possibility of residential lofts above the commercial space. Boeddeker said he hopes to start construction on the office space later this year.
Boeddeker said the community will continue to attract people who are looking for more than a place to live in.
"We are selling a lifestyle, with all the amenities, the work environment," he said. "So that when it's all said and done, it will be a self-contained development."
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