The intersection of Main Street and Charleston Boulevard seems like the gateway to a ghost town—dilapidated buildings, rinky-dink thrift shops and a general feeling of solitude and desolation.
So when the City of Las Vegas planning commission gave the go-ahead for rezoning about two blocks—from Main Street to Industrial Road, from Charleston Boulevard to Wyoming Avenue—for a proposed stadium and a three-casino development, some landowners in the area were delighted.
“My property in the area has been a loser for me,” says Glen Larson, who owns 50 percent of a nearly abandoned commercial office building located at 1501 S. Commerce Street. “Something needs to happen down here.”
But he and other landowners have been chided by members of the local arts community for selling out to the Michigan-based real estate and development company REI. The company plans to demolish three major galleries, including the Commerce Street Studios, and erect a massive, multimillion-dollar redevelopment project by the arts district.
“It’s absolutely going to kill the arts scene,” says Commerce Street Studios gallery owner Todd VonBastiaans. “The company says it’s only two blocks that are being affected, but it’s going to affect more than just that two-block area.”
VonBastiaans, along with other artists such as photographer Diane Bush and attorneys representing local arts matriarch Cindy Funkhouser, spoke against the rezoning at a May 24 meeting.
But the pleas of the arts community were rebuffed swiftly with a unanimous decision to approve the project, sending it to the City Council chambers to be heard on June 20.
REI began to finalize escrow procedures on the buildings in the area, securing almost all of the property in the area and giving landowners more than double the value of their properties. That ends up being anywhere from $2 million to more than $10 million per acre.
“I signed the property off,” says Larson, who says he was offered “substantially more than $2 million” for his property. “[REI is] still working on the financing, but it’s a long ways away from being considered a done deal.”
Funkhouser, who is partners with several other owners of Commerce Street Studios, declined to comment on the sales.
But what some artists and gallery owners fear more than the development of an arts-curdling stadium is the possibility of REI’s pulling out mid-project, leaving nothing but a dust-bowl in the area.
“I can say I don’t want my business sitting across the street from a huge, vacant lot or monstrous construction zone for years,” Dust Gallery co-owner Jerry Misko said via e-mail. “I don’t want to take our name that literally.”
Misko, who has managed to stay out of the political wrangling around the stadium and was painting in his studio during the commission meeting, says that it wouldn’t be the first time he’s seen developers come and take interest in an area, only to leave it high and dry once the actual costs to build and redevelop surface.
“Historically, those come and go rather quickly,” says Misko. “So until something concrete and real takes place, I won’t speculate [on the project].”
The last major project proposed inside the arts district was a 30-story condominium located on Colorado Avenue and Casino Center Boulevard across from Funkhouser’s antiques store, the Funkhouse.
The project failed after gaining approval from the City Council, but plans are still in the works to turn the now-condemned bungalow units into a four-story mixed-use building.
Some artists in the area, like VonBastiaans, as well as property owners, also fear that REI’s proposal may not pass muster with the City Council, leaving them in a sort of financial purgatory as they worry whether they are actually going to be bought out and need to relocate.
“I’d like to see something get done here,” VonBastiaans says. “But either way [if the project doesn’t go forward], somebody will come around and try to do this again. It’s millions of dollars these guys are being offered around here. If you’re property owners in Downtown or around here, there’s no reason not to sell.”