LOOKING IN ON: CITY HALL

Sunday, Oct. 21, 2007 | 12:54 p.m.

The Sun last week got an early look at renderings of the proposed downtown Las Vegas hotel by famed chef Charlie Palmer.

The hotel, a 400-room structure with a price tag reported to be "in the hundreds of millions" of dollars, is to be built just west of the Plaza hotel on the city's once-empty but soon-to-be-filled 61- acre site, once the Union Pacific rail yards.

Construction on the hotel is expected to begin in early 2009, after roads and other infrastructure necessities are in place.

When completed, the rectangular glass, metal and concrete structure is expected to be one of the rare five-star hotels in Las Vegas, said Richard H. Kaufman, president of City-Core Development, a San Francisco-based real estate and investment company that specializes in "urban infill mixed-use projects ... in the (West)," according to the company's Web site.

Kaufman showed some renderings - he would not release them for publication - to a group of people on the second-floor veranda of the new Molasky Corporate Center, 100 City Parkway.

Along with Mayor Oscar Goodman, other public officials talked of the increasing amounts of money being invested downtown, and how future road and bus line projects will make it easier to get to and travel within downtown.

Then, seated in the new Molasky building, attendees feasted on a barrage of images, numbers and schematics as city officials showed, bit by bit, what's to come.

By this time next year, five projects in the 61-acre site now known as Union Park will be under way. Already going up is the Lou Ruvo Brain Institute. Construction is expected to begin about November 2008 on the World Jewelry Center, the Smith Center for the Performing Arts, residential properties by Newland Communities and an ACCESS Medical Development building.

Overall, $1.6 billion in new construction is in the works downtown, with another $20.7 billion planned.

That future investment could be drastically reduced, however, if the $10.5 billion REI Neon arena project fails to materialize.

Though Goodman still regards the project as a long shot, Scott Adams, the city's Office of Business Development director, said new potential backers of the REI Neon project have shown interest, which would make the plan more feasible. He expects more information to be available in about a month.

While all this is going on, the value of the downtown redevelopment area is skyrocketing.

Adams put up a slide showing that the area's value has grown from $359 million in 2004 to $933 million this year.

Jacob Snow, general manager of the Regional Transportation Commission, described the coming rapid-transit bus lines that will focus on downtown Las Vegas. He also mentioned that the RTC's Deuce, double-decker buses that cater largely to tourists on the Strip and going to the Fremont Street Experience, is seeing a "profit" of almost $2.5 million annually.

Making money off a public bus line in the United States is almost unheard of, about as rare as tourists leaving Las Vegas with winnings.

Snow, though, anticipates even more ridership once more lines are completed. He highlighted one line, to the World Market Center, that will run in the middle of the street.

What's significant about that?

Years ago, the monorail was envisioned as working most effectively if it ran down the middle of the Strip. But that idea died, sources say, because of unspecified objections by one major casino owner.

The result: The privately owned monorail , only a few years old, already is practically a relic.

But it's not dead yet. Plans still are being hashed out for a connector to McCarran International Airport, as well as another leg of the monorail on the west side of the Strip, behind the casinos.