A view of the Newport Lofts condo building in downtown Las
Vegas on Thursday, Dec. 16, 2010.
A clip from Joe Schoenmann with the Las Vegas Sun:
Real estate specialist Jack LeVine has during the past four
months seen an intense and growing interest in downtown real estate.
It reminds him of the mid-2000s boom, when on the first day
a home was listed for sale, 10 potential buyers would offer bids.
Something similar has happened in recent months, he says.
Prices today are far below the $100-$200 per square foot
they were during the boom, but offers are coming in at more than the asking
price, according to LeVine.
“I have a stack of buyers who want to buy downtown,” he
says, listing them by occupation — a federal public defender, electrical
engineer, museum curator, federal prosecutor, schoolteacher and artist, exotic
dancer, freelance writer, Las Vegas city employee, a Zappos employee.
“This is the creative class, that’s who’s contacting me,” he
said. “These are Baby Boomers whose kids are grown so they want to move
downtown; these are people who don’t want to live in the ’burbs anymore.”
The rising prices haven’t lifted sales-price statistics,
LeVine said, because so many are being sold by banks, which are less interested
in getting top dollar. If a bank can get cash today at a lower price instead of
waiting for a higher price with a 15- or 30-year mortgage, banks are taking the
cash
.
But the interest in downtown is being reflected in other
ways, including projects experts believe will bring the amenities that have
kept many from considering living in the area.
In April, Newport Lofts sold out. The 168-unit high-rise
project at Hoover Avenue and Casino Center Boulevard was built in 2007
This month, the Las Vegas City Council approved plans for
240 apartments at Casino Center and Coolidge Avenue by New York developer
Barnet Liberman.
Liberman hopes to start construction next summer on the project
that will be paid for in part with funds from the U.S. Department of Housing
and Urban Development’s transit-oriented development, or TOP, program. The
project will feature affordable units with a 680-square-foot, one-bedroom
apartment going for about $850 a month and a 920-square-foot, two-bedroom
priced at $1,100 to $1,200 a month.
“That’s what you need for a city to grow is rental housing,”
said Liberman, who has been involved in urban development for decades,
including the first loft conversion in Manhattan in 1977.
“There shouldn’t be any barrier for lower-income people to
be able to grow and prosper,” he said. “The only question for developers, guys
like myself, is they’ve got to know that there’s a real solid, almost certainty
that if they do A, B and C, then they get D. When you see that the city is
behind you in terms of a common goal, it helps eliminate some of the risk.”
After his 240-unit building is finished, Liberman wants to
begin construction on a 24-story, 1,150-unit apartment building on Charleston
Boulevard at 4th Street. The City Council is expected to hear more about that
during a meeting in November.
Other developers also believe affordable housing is crucial
in the push for downtown’s redevelopment.
Richard Worthington, president and chief operating officer
of the Molasky Group of Cos., envisions affordable housing downtown attracting
the smaller shops needed for an area to thrive.
“This will just drive that kind of development, bring in the
amenities needed downtown,” he said.
John Tippins, Northcap LLC owner and senior vice president
at ST Residential, which owns and operates mid- and high-rise condos and
multifamily properties, including the Ogden high-rise downtown (now 83 percent
occupied), agreed with Worthington.
“You’ve got to have heads in beds,” Tippins said. “When
people can actually live downtown, that’s the important thing to keep the
momentum, which is snowballing right now.”
In some ways, the past and future of downtown’s turnaround
is the same: The amenities are the thing.
Early last decade, when high-rise plans dotted maps of
downtown on the city’s website (very few of those got built), doubts focused on
the lack of grocery, hardware and other basic stores in the area. The suburbs
are chockablock with theaters and hardware stores and supermarkets, so the
living is easier.
The equation for downtown hasn’t changed much over the past
six or seven years, says Robert Fielden, an urban planner and architect in Las
Vegas for almost 50 years.
“There are bars and taverns, but most people don’t want to
sit in a bar every night as entertainment,” Fielden says. “You need things for
the average person to do. A library that is relatively close, neighborhood
parks and green belts, theaters, dining that is affordable, the mom-and-pop kind
of stores.”
Those simple amenities “are going to be so important because
of the competition with everything out in the ’burbs.”
Still, real estate agents like LeVine are seeing growing
demand for homes downtown. From his vantage point, “people are just waiting for
homes to become available.”
