A few years after The Gramercy’s unfinished apartment tower blew up to acclaim, developers are moving forward with plans to build more apartments at the mixed-use outpost. 4,444 Southern California real estate agents, Lyon Living, and LandSpire Group, recently opened The Highline, a 294-unit rental complex located at The Gramercy on Russell Street, just west of 215th Ring Road in Southwest of the  Las Vegas Valley. 

They plan to open the project in the winter of 2023, and its amenities are expected to include a rooftop lounge, co-working space and beer garden, according to a press release, which notes that future plans include 71 townhouses for sale and 25,000 square feet of retail space. 

All in all, the new build cycle marks the final chapter for a suburban real estate business that has included apartments, office and retail space and has a very Vegas history. 

A product of the bubble era of the mid-2000s, the resort was abandoned and unfinished behind a barbed-wire fence after the market collapsed. He then sold for a dollar to investors who blew up one of his buildings, completed the others, and sold the site to pieces for over $100 million. 

Lyon Managing Partner Pete Zak, which acquired two apartment buildings and vacant land from The Gramercy in 2018, says the existing residential space is 97% filled. 

Like other industries, the Las Vegas rental market faced turmoil and questions after the pandemic began. Many renters have used unemployment benefits, stimulus funds, or other assistance programs to pay rent amid huge job losses in southern Nevada, and government-required freezes. continue to start and stop. 

But many have also moved to the valley, including to more expensive markets, under extensive work-from-home arrangements, and southern Nevada has seen apartment construction resume, with Rents increasing and vacations are tighter. 

 “At the start of the pandemic, we saw rents drop, but that quickly changed,” Zak said in an email. 

Developer Alex Edelstein envisioned ManhattanWest, as  Gramercy was originally called, with apartments, restaurants, offices and a hotel spread across 20 acres. He is said to have purchased the site in 2006 for about $30 million and started it in the spring of 2007. 

But the economy quickly collapsed, the financing for ManhattanWest would dry up, and Edelstein ceased to exist. construction in late 2008, leaving one of the construction sites stranded in southern Nevada after its frenzied real estate market collapsed. 

Edelstein sold the unfinished complex to The Krausz Companies and WGH Partners for $20 million in 2013 after spending  $170 million on it. 

The new owners renamed and completed two four-story apartment buildings and two office and retail buildings. They also decided that the apartment tower should disappear. 

Demolition crews wired up the nine-story building with dynamite and blew it up in February 2015. The Sunday morning performance drew large crowds, and Bloody Marys and mimosas were offered to guests. at a safe distance from the site of the explosion. 

The owner sold The Gramercy’s 187,000 square foot commercial buildings to The Koll Co. and Einstein USA in 2017 for $61.75 million. Lyon acquired its share for $45.75 million the following year, acquiring 160 apartments and 12.6 acres of land and parking. 

Zak has confirmed that The Highline will occupy the base of the old apartment tower.

 

From big plans to big failure and then a big boom, the site is now square again as a new building is, once again, starting up.

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