Weina Zhang can’t remember a time when she didn’t work for herself. The Las Vegas-based entrepreneur launched her career selling shoes in rural China as a teenager before eventually joining the tourism and hospitality industry. At 22, she was labeled one of the most successful businesswomen in the Chinese city of Shenzhen, according to a 2009 Las Vegas Sun article.
Zhang got into the development and construction industry when she moved to the U.S., founding Zetian Systems and Z Glass, two companies that have worked on projects for Fontainebleau Las Vegas and New York’s One World Trade Center. In 2018, Zhang and her business partner Anna Olin created Z Life Co., the real estate development company behind the English Hotel, the Arts District’s first boutique hotel—or as Zhang sees it, her “proof of concept.”
“I call this zero to one, to prove what I can do as far as the quality, the cost and the schedule,” she says.
The English Hotel pool
Zhang didn’t have any investors yet when the idea for the English Hotel began to come into focus. But to prove her dedication, “I sold all my assets. I sold my mansion in Spanish Hills. I sold my penthouse in San Francisco. I sold all the real estate and went all-in to build this hotel.”
Award-winning architect Brett Robillard helped design the 74-room hotel, which opened earlier this month, and Zhang says she’s already seeing high occupancy and visitors frequenting Todd English’s Pepper Club, a Mediterranean/Japanese fusion restaurant named afterthe celebrity chef’s dog.
The Weekly caught up with Zhang to discuss the hardships that made her the entrepreneur she is today, and why a boutique hotel belongs in the Arts District.
What makes the Arts District the right spot for the English Hotel?As Vegas people, when you have friends visiting you, you want to show them your Downtown, not a strip mall in Summerlin or Henderson, where they build the same thing. There’s no character. In Los Angeles, you want to go to Venice Beach. Manhattan Beach? Eh. Malibu? Eh. But Venice Beach? It’s culture. We’re the only place that has culture and all this art. … Convention people are 10 minutes away. Fremont’s 10 minutes away. We have it all, location-wise.
The English Hotel has a very sleek, modern look; the glass walls stand out. What was behind the design concept? I moved to New York from China in 1998. Like all the immigrants, you land in New York, and New York is in your heart forever. So when I built it, I was thinking very New York style. If you look at our building, it’s steel, concrete, glass and aluminum, no cheap wood or stucco. You’ll only see this type of building in New York and big cities. … Pepper Club is also New York-style, because in New York, everything is called a club. A lot of the restaurants are called clubs. That’s the experience we wanted to bring to Vegas.
As a developer, what do you foresee happening for the English Hotel and the surrounding area in the next three years?Three years from today … I think we’ll have very nice, lean luxury apartments, all studios. I want to create a co-living and co-working space. I want the artists who helped create this place to be able to afford to stay with us and not get pushed out. I want the people who work for the English Hotel to be able to afford to stay here, instead of driving 30 minutes to somewhere else. They won’t even need a car, because here’s your work and here’s your home within walking distance of the neighborhood.
I’d also like to have some luxury-style hostel, and draw in more of what I call “workation” tech travelers to the community.
How did the challenges of your upbringing in China shape your career?Growing up in inner Mongolia, it was so poor. There were like 20 families in a village. It was in between China and Mongolia, so it was pretty much like no man’s land. No running water or electricity until I was 8 years old. We’d eat whatever we’d grown.
At the time, China had what it called a One Child Policy, so everyone wanted boys. But my parents were not like that. My father’s a teacher, and I grew up loved. … But my neighbors, they wanted boys, but they kept producing girls. And the Chinese Communist government kept taking all their assets.
They stopped at five girls. They were all smart but only two got an opportunity to get into education; the rest had to drop out, because they couldn’t afford it. That’s why I set up the Zetian Children’s Foundation in 2007. My goal was to help the girls get education and it could change the whole family.
My mother was one of nine children. So out of the nine siblings, four girls were illiterate, and the boys got an opportunity to get education. My mother, ever since I could remember, always said, “You need to go to school; you need to get a college degree and change my life.” She didn’t even mention change your life, she was like change my life (laughs).
Somehow she knew I could. So since I was 19, they never worked. I moved my family from poverty to Shenzhen, which sits next to Hong Kong. I bought my mom a condo, it was worth $1.3 million by the day she passed away. She got an ocean view on the 18th floor. She said, “I have the best daughter in the world.”
Considering your success, what advice can you give to other young businesswomen? The most important thing is to forget you’re a woman. Don’t play the woman card until you’re successful. If you play the card before you ever get there, you cannot prove yourself, and no one will care. I don’t care about your color. I don’t care if you’re a man, woman, dog or camel. If you can perform, I’ll hire you. Every CEO wants someone who can perform. I’ll give you a job as a developer, not because of how you look, but because you can perform. Forget you’re a woman and just get into what you do.
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