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By J. Patrick Coolican (contact) 
Monday, June 4, 2012 | 2 a.m.
J. Patrick Coolican
The action is downtown. Neil Young wrote a song about it, “Yeah the hippies all go there/Cause they want to be seen.”
While development remains fairly moribund in the rest of the Las Vegas Valley, there’s suddenly a diverse array of projects in various states of planning and completion downtown.
In the first of what will be a regular feature, let’s go around the horn and check in on some notable parcels.
Arnold Stalk has a history of community-minded development, especially retrofitting dodgy motels. He’s currently working on three projects:
The Econo Lodge at 1150 S. Las Vegas Blvd. is being sold to a nonprofit, which will link up with Las Vegas Urban League, Lutheran Social Services of Nevada and other nonprofits to offer transitional housing for veterans, along with medical and social services to that population.
Variety Early Learning Center will move from 990 D St. to the former Nevada State Museum at 700 Twin Lakes Drive. The school is for kids from 2 months to school age and will help prepare them for kindergarten. The move will allow the school to double enrollment to 250 kids. Much needed. Stalk is using a lot of skilled volunteer labor to do the work, but still needs $750,000 for the retrofit. Donate at varietyearlylearningcenter.org.
The Las Vegas Gateway Project at Fremont and Eastern, at the eastern end of downtown, already has the 2100 Club bar at 2100 Fremont, but will hopefully add a major commercial development that will revitalize the area while retaining its Latin feel. Stalk has approval for a 90,595-square-foot shopping center at the northwest corner of Charleston and Fremont, according to the Planning Department. Dreamers hope this could be an ethnic enclave that draws locals and even tourists, like Chinatown.
• At the same intersection, the important “Five Points” that bring together Charleston, Eastern and Fremont, Trinity Schlottman has approval for 85 Urban Loft townhouse units.
• Simon Malls received approval from the Planning Commission this month to build a 159,257-square-foot addition to the existing outlet mall and expand the parking garage. (Las Vegas: World leader in parking!)
• At 6th and Fremont, construction has started on Commonwealth bar.
• Across the street at 601 Fremont, approvals are in place for another bar.
• After years of financial limbo, Juhl Lofts at 4th and Bonneville seems ready to go. As one downtown real estate insider says, “I think people are waiting to see what rents it draws, as a barometer on whether to go forward with new residential projects.”
• The Las Vegas Planning Department informs me that Barnet Liberman received approval last year for a 14-story mixed-use building with 247 units and 7,580 square feet of commercial space at the northeast corner of Casino Center Boulevard and Coolidge Avenue. He also has approvals for a 1,200-unit residential project at Charleston Boulevard and 4th Street.
• U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement received approval for a big office building at Las Vegas Boulevard and Clark Avenue. Perhaps employees will want to live near work and will push up housing demand downtown.
• The Zappos-affiliated Downtown Project has proposed a much-discussed shipping container development at 7th and Fremont streets. The project would use actual shipping containers for bars, restaurants and such.
• And here’s hoping: Solterra, a British Columbia-based company, has approvals for two buildings at 1st Street and Hoover Avenue: a 50-story mixed-use tower with 700 units and 15,000 square feet of commercial space, and a 14-story mixed-use tower with 130 units and 5,000 square feet of commercial space.
This list isn’t meant to be exhaustive. So if you know of something else in the works, send it my way and we’ll do this again soon.
J. Patrick Coolican is a columnist for the Las Vegas Sun. Follow him on Twitter @jpcoolican or email him at patrick.coolican@lasvegassun.com. His Neon Eden radio show airs Mondays at 8 a.m. on 91.5 FM.
Thanks Patrick. Wow! This is exciting! I need to get out from behind this computer and do some leg work on my own. Watching the strip and focusing on gaming numbers does not show the full development picture in Las Vegas.
Just a note. I would say you can thank former Mayor Oscar Goodman for getting the ball rolling. Yeah, Oscar Goodman. He always talked about development downtown on a large scale. Thanks Oscar.
Ok, I am loving the downtown development as Fremont St. beats the Strip anyday, but I gotta say that unless the City of LV gets a handle on the bums and pan handlers downtown, then it will never attract decent people who want to eat downtown, play cards, gamble, or stay in the downtown Hotels and Casinos. It's an easy fix, you round em up, put em in jail and keep doing this until they get the hint that they are not wanted and then they will traverse into other areas of town....
Also makesense, you light up the entire place, turn empty lots into plazas and outdoor club space, provide ensentives for buisness owners to provide bike parking instead of empty car lots. Turn up the lights and take away empty space and the homeless will leave.
You forgot to mention Art Square, a 16 space retail and commercial space next to the Artifice Bar at First and Boulder. It will be online very soon and creates all new space inside a formerly derelict warehouse.
Creative destruction at work.....the underlying principle of capitalism. We lived in Portland, OR. 35 years ago and worked for the the County Exec. when he got started on something similar. There were two benefits in Portland; leadership from the public sector as well as a supportive city/county establishment and, a couple of visionary, deep-pocket property owners/developers [the Naito family]. Las Vegas has the latter but I'm not convinced that the former is in place other than the Goodmans. It's well known that both LV and Clark County are difficult places to do business with a burdensome regulatory environment and generally indifferent service from regulators. One issue that will need to be addressed early on is dislocation of existing population; homeless, transient motels, SRO occupants and disabled/veterans/low-income. Redeveloped urban areas are not welcoming to those folks so the planners and implementers can address the needs of these folks up front or fight protracted public relations and legal battles as the go along.
Thank you Mr. Coolican for putting this out for many to see. It will draw the negative but fact is Downtown is improving and coming back to life.
Glad to see that there are some future plans for Five Points. Once a good area but is old and neglected. Maybe with some new coming in others in the area will look to improve on their properties.
Downtown is what a person makes of it. Yes, there are street people but in many years we have yet to have any problem with one when we go downtown. If you look for problems chances are you will find it but go with the right attitude and you will have a good time.
Vegas is stepping up, one step at a time.
This is great, as is Patrick's reporting on progress downtown. Enjoying his depth and balance in provide reporting that's neither cheerleading nor naysaying.
They should also install Bio-med boxes around downtown so the junkies will have a place to dispose of their needles and foil!! Downtown will only thrive when marijuana is legalized, the gambling age is lowered to 18 and this area is made into a redlight district like Amsterdam.
Who's with me on this one???
Lots of good things to look forward to downtown. Now they just need to get Fresh and Easy to reopen their store.
I frequent the Fremont street area weekly to gamble at the El Cortez and get a liberal dose of second hand smoke. Mostly, on the sreet, all I see are intoxicated individuals and tourists who appear shocked at the "human circus of characters" on the street. I regularly get "hit on" by hookers too. I think a lot more needs to be done to make the downtown more a respectable place to visit.
Downtown is the place to be. Every weekend down there it's SRO. There is a problem with bums and the homeless like everywhere else in this town. I suggest we reopen the prison at Jean and ship these people out there along with the shelters...
Thanks for keeping us informed.
And if a bakery with reasonable prices and good product opens, please let us know. (How can a downtown area of a town this size not have a bakery?)
After downtown, I hope somebody revives the Commercial Center on Sahara.
By the way, there are many cheap houses within easy bicycle distance of downtown.
No large urban housing development can get financed for another 5 to 10 years. Juhl stumbled in 2009 when the greal recession forced it into foreclosure and bankruptcy. It has taken 3 years to get it out of court, but it's original developer lost it for $132 Million, while a new developer gets to convert it to apartments for a rumored $10 Million. Also, 30 condos had been sold. The outlet mall can expand because it has been wildly successful since 2004 and is owned by the most profitable mall owner in the world. Other commercial development, like retail, is still hard to develop. The redevelopment agency subsidizes many other downtown projects. Or owners are giving free rent to fill space in buildings, which is better for them than letting it sit vacant, i.e. the city to the tenant at 601 Fremont for 5 years, or Neonopolis...
Coolican, can you or any of the reporters do a story that demonstrates Las Vegas is slowly getting better as far as knowing your neighbors and a greater sense of community because people have stopped jumping from house to house and have been kind of forced to stay put. The 'good' unintended consequences are getting to actually know your neighbor and kids staying in the same school and making lasting friendships. With kids now growing up in Las Vegas they will hopefully want to stay here and establish a business or other interests they may have. I truly think we are on the way up "SOCIALLY" for the next generation, that's 30 years right?
maybe if the city and county pissed away another billion taxpayer dollars on buildings (palaces) that they don't need--then downtowns problems would be all gone.
Why is it that a private company like zappos can fix up an old building for small money and make use of it on the cheap--but the county needs to spend hundreds of millions of dollars building a new palace to do taxpayers work???? This logic is what is driving downtown---use taxpayer money to build unneeded projects and make everyone think things are better downtown.
take away all the city and county money and 90% of downtown dries up---all money is tied to taxpayers money being forced into this area.
the jail business is booming---the jail now takes up an entire city block--add 25 plus bail bonds business and 50 ambulance chasing lawyers and you have downtown.