"The FAA really hurt us," Langson says. "We did the best we could and had good sales [the second time around] until everything died a year ago this last fall. From then on, if you used the words 'condo' and 'high rise' in the same paragraph with a lender they went into cardiac arrest."

Shortly thereafter, Langson had a hard time covering the payments on $27 million of debt from Nevada State Bank and OneCap Mortgage that it had accumulated during the pre-development process. OneCap initiated foreclosure proceedings, which precipitated a bankruptcy filing by Nevada Towers, the LLC Langson formed for the project.

That's when San Francisco-based California Mortgage & Realty came through with a $25.5-million debtor-in-possession loan that was approved and closed in just 13 days. The CMR financing paid off the first mortgage loan, paid down the second and took first position in repayment priority.

"It was a pure bridge loan situation where they were about to go to forced auction," CMR's director lending Greg Smith tells GlobeSt.com. "So we basically bought them 12 months to find a JV partner that could come in and give them liquidity and time to adapt to changing market demands."

Now, instead of waiting for the condominium market to rebound, they are taking advantage of the convention market with plans for a new two-tower, 1,980-room hotel and a 105,000-sf retail/entertainment development next to one of the busiest and largest convention centers in the world.

"The bridge loan has allowed us to get ourselves reconfigured," Langson says. "We are well along [in the pre-development process] now; we've had a meeting with the architecture firm we will be using and we are close to making a formal submittal for construction financing, which has been given tentative approval."

The thought now is that the buildings as they were previously designed can be redesigned on the interior to conform to plans for hotel rooms. "It will actually simplify construction," he says. "It's much less complex as a hotel property."

With the high end of the condo market still alive and well, Langson says current plans call for the top couple of floors of each building to hold penthouse condominiums, possibly 20 units averaging about 3,500 sf. Then again, he says, one buyer is looking at having a 14,000-sf unit.

The tiered retail promenade has been designed in the center of the overall proposed project, though the hotel operator will have an opportunity to suggest changes. A sought-after attribute of the retail is that the property has been granted the suitability determination by Clark County for up to a total of 41 limited gaming licenses.

"If you have the ability to wait, you can step in bad things and still have good things happen," Langson says.