Walgreens will anchor $25 million parcel across from CityCenter

By Joe Schoenmann

Thursday, June 3, 2010 | 2 a.m.

The Strip may not need another hotel room or blackjack table, but apparently gamblers can always use more aspirin.

That’s what the buyer of a 2.16-acre parcel across from CityCenter appears to have been thinking when it paid $25 million for the land in February.

At the time, financial analysts scratched their heads.

The price exceeded by about 300 percent what was considered the going rate for choice land on Las Vegas Boulevard.

It seemed to be an anachronism from the go-go years of the early 2000s.

Contributing to the mystery, the buyer, BPS Partners, which includes developer Brett Torino, didn’t reveal its plans. Was it going to flip it to a deep-pocketed, would-be casino mogul? Was its plan to buy and hold it until boom times return?

Answers came this week.

BPS Partners plans to keep the land and turn it into a three-story, 100,000-square-foot retail center anchored by Walgreens. The Clark County Commission approved use permits Wednesday.

Ground will be broken on the project in the next few months, Torino said.

It’s a project that makes sense in this economy, said John Knott, executive vice president of CB Richard Ellis in Las Vegas, and one of the experts who was puzzled by the land purchase in February.

Such “build-to-suit” developments — constructed with particular tenants in mind as opposed to strip malls built on the hope that tenants will materialize — have fared better during the recession, said Brian Gordon, a principal at Applied Analysis.

“The only use that makes sense at that price was this ... or something similar,” Knott said. “You can’t make sense of new construction of a resort. And look at Carl Icahn, who bought the Fontainebleau and his desire not to do anything with it, because it doesn’t make sense right now.”

Walgreens and other retailers will be across Las Vegas Boulevard from CityCenter, which is seeing business improve.

Neither Gordon nor Knott would declare the small project a green shoot, signaling the beginning of an economic turnaround for the Strip.

“Assuming the plans go forward, it would be one of the few projects to get off the ground,” Gordon said. “It’s a sign that at least someone has confidence in their ability to attract tenants.”

County Commissioner Chris Giunchigliani sees a trend at work, one she thinks will help the local economy. People want not to merely be dazzled by lights and pirate shows, but to be comfortable, too.

“It’s accommodating pedestrian tourists as a service, which we haven’t always had to focus on because we had so much volume,” she said. “But it’s time to bring good service back to the tables, and not just at four-star restaurants. Accommodating the consumer makes good sense for trying to bring back Vegas.”

The Walgreens would be one of a handful of the drug chain’s stores on the Strip — one is near MGM Grand. (A third is on Las Vegas Boulevard at Charleston Boulevard, which is not considered the “Strip.”)

“If a customer in another state is visiting, we want to make it convenient for them to fill their prescriptions at a pharmacy that knows their history, in addition to picking up the essentials, whether it be sunscreen or a bottle of water,” Walgreens spokesman Robert Elfinger said.

Blogs are filled with comments and questions from Las Vegas visitors wondering whether they can find the mundane among the city’s flamboyant attractions.

As one on Yahoo.com put it: “Is there a convenience store on the Strip?”