NAIOP Panel: The Real Estate Possibilities for the Las Vegas Strip Are Limitless

Just hours after the scheduled implosion of the historic Tropicana Hotel on the Las Vegas strip Wednesday morning, a panel of commercial real estate experts presenting at the NAIOP CRE.Converge conference one mile away emphasized that the real estate future of the famed strip is limitless.

The panel in fact used the demolition of the Tropicana as a case in point showing how the strip is constantly being reinvented; the site is now the future home of a professional baseball stadium for the future Las Vegas Athletics.

It may seem like the strip is confined by its geography and the expansive resorts occupying parcels that have hundreds of acres. But the panel said that growth will make it unrecognizable in 20 years.

“There’s always room for more,” said Tonia Chafetz, a retail expert with Caesars Entertainment. She was joined on the panel by Jeremy Aguero with Applied Analysis, Tick Segerblom, member of the Clark County Commission, and Michael Parks with CBRE, who moderated the session.

The strip is now dotted – literally – with the Sphere concert venue, a professional football stadium, and has so many future development projects about to break ground that Aguero claimed, “We’re just getting started.”

In fact, more than $30 billion in major projects are nearing development, Segerblom said. And he said the ability of business and civic leaders to work together and achieve success for the city makes it unparalleled in the U.S.

Future projects include developing additional parcels on the Tropicana site, the redevelopment of The Mirage, a hotel and casino being developed by billionaire Tillman Fertitta, and BLVD, a retail center currently under construction.

But all these projects require infrastructure to support them, and there is a long list of those projects as well; Las Vegas welcomes 40 million visitors annually, and its destinations are serviced by hundreds of thousands of employees.

To that end, civic leaders are planning an expansion of the Harry Reid International Airport, the Nevada Department of Transportation is planning an expansion of the I-15 gateway to the city near the Tropicana site, and billionaire Elon Musk’s The Boring Company is moving ahead with an underground transportation system with a planned 65 miles of tunnels beneath the city.

While retail has gone through a transformation following the pandemic-driven shift to online purchasing, in Las Vegas, Chafetz says the mantra of “make it experiential” is in full force. She said that retailers are finding success with large, flagship locations that have “instagrammable” features.

She added that companies from around the world are constantly presenting new potential concepts for her; Las Vegas rivals only New York as the place they want to launch their stores.

One further area of growth: cannabis. While the large hotel and casino operators have shied away from having dispensaries, that will change as financial regulations become more formalized.

Challenges do remain – Segerblom pointed out that commercial development does not always pay for itself, and Las Vegas is not immune from the trials that every American city faces.

“What are we delivering in terms of the guest experience?” asked Aguero. “How easy is it to get around? Public safety is a challenge. It’s our responsibility to make the experience so good that people want to come back.

In addition, workers need to be able to get to the strip – which sometimes justifies higher pay, Chafetz said. Plans for a second airport are on the drawing board, and the coming Formula One Grand Prix will severely limit access to the strip. Last year during the race he said that people could not get to work.

Some ideas that have been floated include employee villages co-located with the properties themselves. Casinos would have doctors and childcare on site to care for employees and their families.

“We can’t forget the people who live here and who built this place,” Segerblom said. Still, he added, “This community continues to be the one that others aspire to be.”