Vegas Magazine - Niche Media - There is a place beyond the crowds, beyond the ropes, where dreams are realized and success is celebrated. You are invited.
Issue link: http://digital.greengale.com/i/198558
REAL ESTATE NEWS Up, Up and Away HIGH-RISE CONDO SALES VEER SKYWARD, HOTELS BET ON A CONFERENCE SURGE, AND A LUXURIOUS NEW PROJECT (PLUS ANOTHER GETTING A SECOND CHANCE) SIGNAL NEW OPTIMISM. D on't call it a comeback. Pordes Residential has been here before. The firm, based in Aventura, Florida, and known for resurrecting troubled condo properties like Canyon Ranch Living Miami Beach, relaunched sales at CityCenter's Veer Towers (veertowers.com) in February after jointly acquiring 427 Veer condos. And what a relaunch it's been. Pordes racked up more than 50 sales in the first four months (compared to just six in the same period last year) and hosted a June party to celebrate the resurgence. By the end of September, CEO Mark Pordes had found buyers for 85 units, from studios to three-bedrooms and with prices from $250,000 to more than $1.8 million—buyers who see value in a development where presales were once priced around $1,000 per square foot. "I came across this opportunity by closely tracking the condo market in Las Vegas," he says. "It was showing a similar trend of declining inventory like the Miami market." About half the buyers are from California. "Nowhere else will you find a 16 million-square-foot playground right outside your home," he adds. The interest in Veer condos has been strong enough for Pordes to raise the price for certain locations and layRIGHT: Southern outs. "Sales are ahead of schedule, Highlands, whose and we anticipate them to strengthen developer is through the next selling season." bringing a vast Mandalay Bay and MGM Grand, new residential real estate with all of their conference and event project to northwest Las spaces, have established the south Vegas. BOTTOM: end of the Strip as a hub for corporate The Gramercy. gatherings. And now the Tropicana (troplv.com), a DoubleTree by Hilton resort conveniently located between them, wants a bigger piece of the conference pie. The property has announced plans to nearly double the size of its conference and meeting space to more than 100,000 square feet, including five new breakout rooms on the second floor of the Club Tower, which already features three ballrooms offering 19 breakout rooms. An expansion of the 120 Tropicana Pavilion will give that wing of the resort's conference center more than 55,000 square feet of flexible space for big exhibits and meetings. Manhattan West, the defunct mixed-use Summerlin development, is being resurrected. The $350 million, 12building project, on 20 acres at Russell Road and the Beltway, has languished half-built since construction stopped in 2008. But the Krausz Companies and the principals of WGH Partners are injecting new life into the stalled development, rebranding it The Gramercy. Revised plans call for a pair of four-story buildings with a combined 200,000 square feet of top-shelf office and retail space, plus a nine-story high-rise with 86 luxury apartments and a rooftop pool party deck, among other perks. There will also be a four-story mid-rise with 160 additional apartments and two community parks. The developers expect to welcome the first tenants in the spring of 2014. And we're back. The developer of TOP: The Tropicana is Southern Highlands is making a big juicing up its bet on the recovery of the Vegas real conference business. estate market with a massive new LEFT: Unit 5 at housing project. The Olympia Veer Towers. Companies (theolympiacompanies.com) has announced the launch of a 1,700acre master-planned community that it's calling "the first major development to be announced in the Las Vegas area since the beginning of the recession." The northwest Las Vegas property, with room for 9,000 homes as well as commercial and gaming space, borders Grand Teton Drive and Highway 95. "After several years of little to no movement, the announcement of this new community and increased activity in the housing and construction industry signals that our economy is strengthening," Las Vegas City Councilman Steve Ross said in a statement. The project will break ground this fall. Says Garry V. Goett, Olympia's chairman and CEO, "We look forward to breaking ground on the first major development in the area since 2007. This is a fantastic piece of property with incredible terrain and views." V PHOTOGRAPHY COURTESY OF VEER TOWERS (VEER); STUDIO J/THE GRAMERCY (GRAMERCY); KEVGLOBAL (TROPICANA); OLYMPIA COMPANIES (SOUTHERN HIGHLANDS) BY ANDY WANG VEGASMAGAZINE.COM 120_V_BOB_HP_HPNews_Nov13.indd 120 10/22/13 5:45 PM