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Leaving Las
Vegas, for the Suburbs
February 29, 2008 - WHEN Bob Carson set out last year to find a second
home in the Las Vegas area, his list of must-haves was short but sweet.
A house in the Red Rock Country Club neighborhood of Summerlin.
He wanted to be close to golf courses. He wanted a pick of fine restaurants.
Perhaps most important, he wanted to be a comfortable distance from the hubbub
of Las Vegas, without keeping it too far out of reach.
Mr. Carson found all of these things in and around Summerlin, a booming
community about 12 miles northwest of downtown Vegas. Mr. Carson, a retired
shopping-center developer, spent nearly $2 million on a 10th-floor condominium
at One Queensridge Place, a new two-tower Art Nouveau high-rise on the outskirts
of Summerlin with commanding views of the Las Vegas Valley.
“Being here is the best of both worlds,” said Mr. Carson, who expects to visit
from his primary home in Del Mar, Calif., roughly once a month.
Despite a sagging real estate market across the country (including in Las Vegas
itself), real estate agents say second-home owners are still attracted to this
area in the shadow of the fire-red Spring Mountains and the 196,000-acre
playground known as Red Rock National Conservation Area.
While nobody keeps specific figures on secondary residences in the Summerlin
area, Jeremy Aguero, principal analyst at Applied Analysis, a real estate
economics consulting firm in Las Vegas, said that over the last five years
Summerlin had become one of southern Nevada’s top destinations for vacation
homes.
“Summerlin offers many different things to many different people,” he said,
noting that home prices range start in the high $200,000s and go up to more than
$10 million.
Real estate growth in this part of the West certainly is nothing new; according
to data from Home Builders Research, a Las Vegas research firm, there have been
nearly 257,000 new housing units since 1998 in Clark County, a 55 percent
increase overall.
On the Las Vegas Strip, many of these properties have been planned expressly
with the second-home buyer in mind — urban retreats for people tired of
frittering $300 a night for hotel rooms. In the Summerlin area, some of which is
in Clark County and the rest in Las Vegas, the vibe is much more residential,
and development is accelerating.
First there’s Summerlin itself, where crews recently broke ground on a 107-acre
urban core named Summerlin Centre, which eventually will house department
stores, offices and restaurants. Adjacent to One Queensridge Place, construction
also is moving forward on the Village at Queensridge, a 700,000-square-foot
mixed-use facility with offices, restaurants and more. Both spaces are scheduled
to open next year.
Other projects in the Summerlin area are already complete. The Red Rock Casino
Resort & Spa, the flagship property of Station Casinos, opened in 2006, and now
includes a 16-screen movie theater and 72-lane bowling alley.
Elsewhere, Boca Park Fashion Village, a 97-acre shopping mall, opened a few
years ago and now contains such high-end boutiques as Talulah G, Pink and Von
Dutch.
Top-notch dining options have sprouted, too, including a number of chic wine
bars with tapas-style menus and Marché Bacchus, an upscale Mediterranean bistro
with a menu that attracts Damien Dulas (of Guy Savoy) and other top chefs from
the Strip on their days off.
Summerlin has endless options for outdoor recreation; the area is home to more
than 100 public parks, nearly 150 miles of manicured trails and nine golf
courses, including the Tournament Players Club at Summerlin, which was designed
by the golf greats Fuzzy Zoeller, Bobby Weed and Raymond Floyd.
Add these to the hiking, mountain biking, rock climbing and horseback riding
available in Red Rock National Conservation Area, and even the most committed
coach potatoes can’t stay slothful for long.
For Howard Cohen, a local second-home owner who spends half of the year in
Aspen, Colo., all of this was irresistible. “We bought here because of all the
things to do,” said Mr. Cohen, who paid $1.5 million for his 3,400-square-foot,
single-story home in Summerlin. “The area is new, exciting, convenient and has
all the comforts of home.”
Mr. Cohen added that there are financial benefits to buying a home in southern
Nevada: the state has some of the lowest property taxes in the country at less
than 1 percent of assessed value, and (for those second-home owners who end up
staying for more than six months a year) is one of seven states that do not levy
personal income tax.
THE area surrounding Summerlin wasn’t always such a hot spot; as recently as 25
years ago, it was nothing but sand. In the 1950s, Howard Hughes purchased 25,000
acres for 25 cents per acre. He named the parcel after his grandmother, Jean
Amelia Summerlin, and sat on it for decades. In the late 1980s, as Vegas
established itself as one of the 30 largest cities in the United States and the
Howard Hughes Corporation started building, people arrived in droves.
Today, this land comprises a 22,500-acre master-planned community with a
combined full- and part-time population of nearly 100,000. Tom Warden, vice
president of community and government relations for the Howard Hughes
Corporation, said an additional 120,000 residents are expected in the next 10 to
20 years.
Many residents live in tract-house neighborhoods with names like the Mesa, the
Willows and the Trails. Most of these neighborhoods have European roundabouts,
walking paths and easy access to a new I-215 freeway, dubbed the Bruce Woodbury
Beltway after a politician on the Clark County Commission, which governs
unincorporated portions of Clark County.
A handful of neighborhoods, including Red Rock Country Club, Eagle Rock, the
Ridges and Aventura, are gated — a feature that has appealed to second-home
owners concerned about securing their investments between visits.
“For these people, knowing that their homes will be safe and looked after if
they don’t get back to Summerlin for a month or two offers great peace of mind,”
said JoAnne Federico, an agent with Prudential Americana Group in Las Vegas.
Tricia Reilly Johnson and her husband, Matthew, are leasing a house in Summerlin
before they decide what and where to buy.
Still, life in a master-planned community can have its drawbacks.
After adding up fees for the community’s master plan fund and the individual
neighborhood homeowners’ association, most buyers must shell out about an
additional $1,000 a year. What’s more, a number of local homeowners’
associations have adopted strict regulations, such as limitations on when cars
can park on certain streets, requirements that homeowners put portable
basketball hoops away at night and restrictions on the colors that homes can be
painted.
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