Before coming to Southern Nevada, he worked in urban redevelopment in several cities, such as Memphis, Tenn.; New Orleans; and Fort Lauderdale, Fla. Since his arrival, he has worked to implement the programs outlined in the Downtown Centennial Plan and introduced several programs to encourage development in the city's core.

He talked to In Business Las Vegas about the success of the redevelopment effort, the challenges facing a city with a rapidly expanding population and the possible effect an economic slowdown would have on the region.

It's at a very high level. We've worked through our first wave of development that's happened over the last three years or so with a lot of big projects like the factory outlet mall, the World Market Center, the Molasky Corporate Center and Union Park. We've also got a big jolt of housing, and there's enough substantial development where there's a real sense of momentum now in the downtown. We're now working on that next wave, which I guess you could call the second cycle of development, which is to continue Union Park, which is big. I think until now people have just seen it as a big vacant tract of sand, and it's now become not just a building started with the Gehry-designed Ruvo Institute, but we'll start seeing roads and utilities. Once you start getting roads in, you'll really get a sense of what the master plan is going to be.

The other big projects are the LiveWork Las Vegas/Forest City project. We're thrilled that Forest City has chosen to invest in downtown and take a huge interest in the project. We're working diligently to package all of the agreements to facilitate its development of that site, the swap of the site for a new City Hall and get the City Hall project put together. We're going to be bringing a master agreement to the (Las Vegas City) Council on May 21 for that.

The other big project is (CIM Group's) redevelopment of the Lady Luck. We (recently) spent a day touring CIM's projects in Los Angeles. It is a very substantial company. When you look at the extent of its holdings and its projects you realize just how important it is that (the company is) here investing in downtown through the acquisition of the Lady Luck and its plan to redevelop it as well as the block around the (historic downtown) post office.

Valley and citywide it's been devastating in the housing industry. I don't think you can sugarcoat that. It's been very dramatic. The condo market is pretty flat, the for-sale, single-family market is flat. The rental market is strong - there are still rental opportunities. Probably the biggest impact that it's had, valleywide and downtown, is that right now the financial markets are at a pause. The really large investment firms that finance projects on a really large scale - many of those have been hit hard by the subprime mortgage crisis, and they are very tenuous in their interest in financing. So getting large-scale projects financed is very difficult right now. The phase we're in ... is more of a planning phase for a lot of developers. They are really taking this period to put projects together and get them set up for when the economy turns around, the financial markets come back. They'll be in a position to finance projects and move forward.

Source: Las Vegas Business Development Office In Business Las Vegas

It's so large, and we are doing it differently than, for example, the CityCenter project, where (MGM Mirage is) doing that whole thing at one time. We're doing it block by block, using individual developers for each block. So what will happen as a result of that is there are going to be subtle changes to the master plan over time as the market changes and as development interests change. It will happen over a slower time period, but that's the way downtowns develop, they develop incrementally. You will see Union Park develop incrementally, but faster than you might see other downtown development occur. And the reason for that is that we control the whole thing. We own all of the real estate, we're putting the investment in the front-end on the infrastructure, so we can accelerate the development of Union Park. We're not subject to private property ownership and their perception of market conditions. We can move it along faster.

All of that is built in. We've got cultural, civic projects. Some of those were built in deliberately as - I'll use the term "loss leaders." We've donated the sites to get them to the Union Park project, like the (Smith Center for the Performing Arts), the Ruvo Brain Institute. Those were meant to be catalysts to create some initial critical mass and interest, and they have served their purpose. You look at the Gehry-designed Ruvo Brain Institute that has been tremendous in terms of creating interest because of Frank Gehry's reputation. And it's going to be extremely dramatic architecture. The performing arts center is the first performing arts center in the valley for the entire community, not just a tourist attraction like the events centers on the Strip. So those things kind of set the tone for this to be an urban city-within-a-city that's different from a lot of other developments in the valley.

When you look at (projects) like the District or Town Square or CityCenter, they tend to be more homogeneous ... The intent of this project was for it to be a more eclectic mix of uses, to truly be a profile of a real downtown. It's also intended to be very dense. There is enough design control to make sure it's a high-quality environment, but we're not dictating how everybody designs their buildings. If you really look at the progression of architecture, you're going to see the Gehry-designed Brain Institute, which is very contemporary. You'll see very traditional architecture in the (David M.) Schwartz-designed performing arts center. It's going to look like something you might have seen decades ago. Then you morph that into the Charlie Palmer hotel, which is a midcentury modern piece. And then you go into the World Jewelry Center, which is another contemporary piece. It's meant to be like a real downtown with a real mix of use, architecture and interest.

This goes back a ways to David Mitchell and Barnett Lieberman's assembly of the original tract. It's an absolutely astronomical feat in the core of downtown to assemble five blocks of real estate privately without the help of the redevelopment agency or eminent domain or anything like that. They set up five (limited liability companies). They used what we like to call the Walt Disney approach, where you set up five different companies, you assemble land into each of the five, and everybody thinks there are five different projects. When they get it all done, they consolidate the ownership into one group, they brand it LiveWork Las Vegas. Then we spent some time working with them marketing their assembly to real estate development companies, and they were successful in getting Forest City Enterprises, one of the nation's premier urban redevelopers.

It really was. When you look at Forest City's portfolio, it is really one of the truly premier developers. In fact, if you have a 401(k) that has a real estate mutual fund, I guarantee you've got a Forest City holding in that mutual fund. That's the quality of real estate it develops. It is an investment-grade real estate planner, and it's exciting to have it here. What it means is, we now have (a corporation that) really knows what it is doing to help us build a City Hall and make it part of a project that's going to be exciting as opposed to just another City Hall. It is absolutely the best in ... building buildings. The critics have wondered what will City Hall do for redevelopment of an area. If you take a purely governmental approach to locating City Hall, maybe not a whole lot. But if you then make it part of an exciting new mixed-use development that one of the country's preeminent developers is doing, it becomes a totally different kind of project, and then City Hall does become a true catalyst.

This is a really good deal for us. First of all, we really do need a new City Hall - let me address that misconception. If you take a long-term projection of the city's space needs, we do need more space. We're just simply taking advantage of a short-term opportunity to have it done by a developer, under controlled cost and make it become a catalyst for urban redevelopment. I've pointed out at council (meetings) that it really catalyzes four separate developments. It catalyzes the LiveWork project, the casino project at Union Park, it facilitates the relocation of the intermodal terminal, which catalyzes the CIM development of the post office block - it can't do that block until the intermodal terminal is relocated. It then also opens the door for redevelopment of the City Hall and what we've been referring to as the arena site across the street, the 12 acres that we've assembled as one large urban redevelopment site on Las Vegas Boulevard and the Las Vegas Boulevard-(U.S.) 95 interchange. It's exciting. (Forest City officials) also, in our negotiations with them, really offered it as basically an at-cost project, simply to get City Hall in their project. They understand that its importance isn't to make money on the backs of building a City Hall, it's to get City Hall in the project to act as a catalyst for their total development. So, in that vein, they gave us a deal to make it financially attractive for us to do the project. That's the difference between this and just a stand-alone City Hall, where the developer is making its money on the deal, and (Forest City) making its money on the larger-scale project, and City Hall is just the piece that makes it happen.

That's exactly right. This has been a very deliberate strategy on our part. We sat here two years ago and figured out how to connect these dots in the sense of creating some connections between these projects and what the logical sequence would need to be so that we could get all of them done. It started to form up about two years ago when we started seeing the relationship, for example, between the bus terminal and LiveWork and the need for redevelopment around the post office, tied to our redevelopment of the post office as a mob museum. We realized that if we relocated City Hall, we have an 18-acre site with potential for redevelopment. So we then set out to develop a plan for how to make all those connections and make it all fit together. It's not a house of cards, where if you pull one away they all fall down because they do stand on their own two feet. There's a connection, but if one of the players walked tomorrow, we still can keep the whole set of projects moving forward. We really wanted to create a vision of how it all fits together, but at the same time not make them so dependent that they all fall apart if one of them falls out.

It's probably a little too early to say, but there are a couple of elements that seem to always come up when you talk about redevelopment of a downtown, especially in Las Vegas. Clearly gaming development is one of those big issues, so a hotel or a hotel-casino becomes a piece. That's a little problematic in terms of getting gaming rights. There is some potential for getting gaming rights on at least a portion of the site, so that's one option. It's within walking distance of Fremont Street, and being on the interstate interchange makes it a great location for that. Housing is another issue - anytime you are looking at urban redevelopment in a downtown area, housing becomes a piece that can get integrated into a development. Possibly even office space.

Retail is always in every aspect of development that we do. As you know, we have a ground-floor retail requirement throughout downtown because of the centennial plan, and we continue to encourage that. We want an active, vibrant downtown, so retail is another piece. It's going to be a combination of mixed-use and some reasonable combination of those components ultimately, at the end of the day. It wouldn't rule out some special purpose uses, too.

We've really thrust ourselves into being viewed now nationally as a place for professional sports. I don't think any of us are closing the door on it as being a potential site, as some type of venue for that. I can't really say which one yet, but it's a big enough site when you've got 12 acres contiguous, plus a site across the street where you can fit an arena or some type of major sports use in.

There are other uses. I'll have to say the World Market Center is a critical project for the city in terms of proving up a whole new concept in business plan for use, that being marts. We have seen strong interest in mart development and that's continued with the World Jewelry Center. We saw a proposal for a sports mart as part of (the REI Neon/Warburg Pincus) redevelopment of the 70-acre tract at the south end of downtown. That's another one of those highly specialized uses that could find itself on a large-scale site. There's a whole wide range of uses, and it's really going to take some good, high-quality developers to come in and do their market studies, take a hard look at what we can push the envelope for, in terms of market for that site, and make it happen. We're going to be really careful about holding it for a very high-quality, special development. Those types of sites don't come along every day, we're just not going to take the first thing that comes along just because somebody thinks they can make a buck on the site. That's where we've been very careful working with Forest City, CIM and all of these large-scale developers in creating their highest quality development downtown.

I think so. This is Las Vegas. The thing I have always pointed out in the past is that I don't think we should judge the success of downtown redevelopment solely on whether gaming numbers are up or down downtown. I view the success of redevelopment downtown on the continued momentum of private investment. Our calculation on numbers are: the dollar value, of private investment, how many jobs we create and how many square feet, how many units we produce and what we incrementally add to the investment that has already occurred that will continue to build critical mass and make downtown a place people want to come to. That doesn't always mean gaming. We keep seeing the published numbers of gaming revenues and downtown being somewhat flat, although recently it has been starting to turn up. That's just one dimension of success in redeveloping downtown.

Well, that's because that's how it started, downtown really formed on the backs of the development of Fremont Street as the original Strip in Las Vegas. Before the Strip even got started we had Fremont Street and that's how downtown got its start. That doesn't mean we continue downtown as predominantly a gaming center. I think its real future is as the true heart and center of the entire Las Vegas Valley, as a cultural center, a business center, a governmental center. That's where downtown's future is and gaming is a component of that. The beauty of gaming, and the thing that makes Las Vegas work better and faster than some other cities is that gaming generates more profit and makes you able to do things here that you can't do in some other cities. If you put gaming in a project, you can generate enough profit to make a deal work, where simply building stand-alone retail, office, or hotel use isn't as profitable as having a gaming component as part of it.

Right now it's hard for people to see that. It struck me when I was working out at the new 24-Hour Fitness (near the Spaghetti Bowl) and as I looked out the window I was struck by just how close things are together. When you look at it from an aerial view or you look at it on a map, Union Park seems like this huge tract of land and almost an abyss that's hard to get across with the railroad tracks. But when you actually get there physically, it's much closer than you might think.

Well, I think you're going to see everybody has ideas for that. Forest City has the rights to (parcels at Union Park) under a development agreement. You've got Tamares (Group) with the Plaza and its 17-acre development across the railroad tracks. Don't forget Boyd (Gaming). Boyd has a surface parking lot right next to Fremont there, next to the Plaza, and a whole corner of downtown. Boyd has Main Street Station, the Fremont, California, all the parking lots. I think you're going to see everybody work hard together to bring that whole part of downtown together as we build out Union Park. I think when it's done you're going to see one unified downtown and you're going to forget about whether you're going to join the new with the old because it's all going to look like one big piece.

That's a huge issue. I would say one of the things we have going for downtown is that we already have, from Day 1, a built-in advantage in the redevelopment of downtown. If you take an aerial map of the valley and put a pin in the center, you end up in downtown. We have a natural advantage by being the most central location in the valley. The Strip is not really very centrally located. It's at the southern end of the valley and the two (major highways, Interstate 15 and U.S. 95) intersect downtown in what's called the Spaghetti Bowl. So we have the best access of anywhere in the valley. As we continue to build downtown we're going to want to continue to tweak that regional system to make it even more accessible - for example, to get into Union Park, to get into some of these larger-scale developments. That's part of the plan that we at the city and all of the transportation folks have been working on. With the widening of Interstate 15 and the widening of (Interstate) 515 and (U.S.) 95, there's a whole set of infrastructure associated with both of these that entail new ramps, widening (for improved) access in and out of downtown. Then within downtown itself, we've been looking at our own intra-downtown system and making sure we can get people around downtown once they get here. The bus rapid-transit system, the ACE system that (the Regional Transportation Commission) is moving forward with is actually under construction right now and is going to be a big help in that regard - actually having transit downtown and then connecting downtown to other parts of the valley.

Well, realize that we only deal with the city of Las Vegas, so we kind of stop at Sahara. It's interesting because what we are finding in the redevelopment business is that we are a victim of our own success. The city has built three successful business parks in the last 15 years. We started with Spectrum out at Mojave and Charleston. We built that out with the private sector, we own that land, conveyed it to the private sector and it was built out. We moved to the Tech Center up at Cheyenne and 95. In fact it was land at the Tech Center that was swapped for Union Park - we effectively used that to get Union Park. And then we've been building out Enterprise Park on MLK and Lake Mead. We don't have a lot of planned business parks in the future of Las Vegas, so that's why we've really been emphasizing downtown.

But if I were to look at areas that represent opportunities, it's in the far northwest as we've continued to annex and bring more property into the city. There are great opportunities in that area for redevelopment. Then I would say Summerlin continues to build out and represent within the city, just an incredible master-planned community, and these places are equally important in community development because they create a quality of life that people want to be a part of. At the end of the day, a reason why a business locates in a community often becomes quality-of-life reasons for their employees as much as cost reasons for the business itself.

If you're there sitting on a big chunk of land and trying to figure out how to make your next landlord payment, you've got a problem. But if you take a higher-level view in terms of the history of Las Vegas, you realize that we tend to be the last in and the first out on recessions and economic downturns. I would say it's a blip in the scheme of things that are ultimately going to happen. I would expect that as we recover, we continue to grow and develop, and those developments and areas continue to get back on track.

They might, but at the end of the day, you're going to see those things happen.

You need to separate that tract of land from arena development. One of the issues we realized fairly early on is that acquiring that large of a tract of land for arena development became an impediment, just due to the sheer cost of the acquisition. The acquisition cost of the property was some $700 million, and the arena was not even that much. It took a very large-scale development to make the acquisition occur, just to get an arena, so you're already a house of cards on that. What we've done is really worked with REI and other potential partners on a different view of how to get an arena done, which is really whittle it down to a site where you can get an arena done without the baggage of having to get a very large tract of land and do things that aren't very economically viable. You get into that tract of land and I would hope that somehow we collectively figure out how to keep that assembly together because the general prevailing consensus is that tracts time will come in the next three to five years. You look at how the Strip has evolved to the north end. The Kerzner/MGM tract was the last piece to be acquired - the vacant land across from the Sahara. As that builds out, you're going to see the Strip move into the south end of downtown around the Stratosphere and that tract is the largest assembly in that area. So, if it could be held together to the next cycle of Strip development, it has incredible potential. When they first came in that's how we looked at it, as an incredible tract of land for redevelopment.

I'm not sure it's even that. Maybe it's just a question of how many big chunks of land can you absorb over a reasonable period of time. I think what happens is that in Las Vegas, we create expectations that, at times, are almost unrealistic. We're in an unprecedented level of development along the Strip right now, so the bar keeps getting set higher and higher in terms of our expectations. If you look at it historically, it's going to take a little while for that development to reach the REI/Neon Lights tract.

Oh, absolutely. We've created a vision that I don't think anybody would have realized. In fact, I give credit to the assemblers, Robert Reel and Tom Prato and REI, for stepping up and creating a vision for where this could head over the next three to five years. In the redevelopment business, it's all about vision and creating value, and we've got to be a step ahead of where the market actually is in our potential investments. There are folks that think some of what we are doing downtown is not ready yet, but that's the business we're in, we're in the business of getting ahead of the marketplace.

The contingency plan is where it was headed before the assemblage came along, which was continued development of the Arts District and continued infill development in that area. It still represents a great investment opportunity. I don't think that area will ever get back to what it was. No matter what happens, you're going to see that 70 acres, at worst, break into smaller assemblages and more large-scale development just because it's in the way of the march northward of development along the Las Vegas Strip. The Strip is this organic thing that grows in both directions. If you wonder what's going to happen north, just go look south. It's like squeezing a tube of toothpaste: If you've got both ends open, it's going to come out of both ends.

We've been working with three groups: REI, Cordish and Goldman Sachs. The Goldman Sachs Whitehall fund purchased the Stratosphere and it has a collective interest in that area. Obviously, I think Goldman Sachs would love to see an arena there because it would reinforce its investment in the Stratosphere. Cordish is in the business of entertainment-themed development. If you look at its track record, it is coming off the Kansas City bar and light district, which is where it built a big arena in a large mixed-use development. It built the Hard Rock in Florida, and we're excited that it is interested in downtown. We're just trying to find a place for it to put a flag in the ground and get going, and we think this project represents that opportunity. We just have to figure out how to put that together.

It made a statement to us that to me is profound, and that is that the Lady Luck represents the one holding in its entire portfolio that is not performing right now. It is not in the business of holding nonperforming assets, so there is a private inertia there for it to make something happen. Our goal is to bring a development agreement, probably in the first or second meeting in June. Then it will be on our schedule of performance thereafter. You're probably going to see a flurry of activity shortly thereafter in terms of getting back into the permit process to get the Lady Luck back on line, to get reinvestment into the property and the hope is that it would continue into the property around the post office and keep right on going. That's what it has done elsewhere. If you look at what it's done in Hollywood, Santa Monica and downtown Los Angeles, it just continues to build on its prior investments.

Not really. Let's put it in perspective. When you look at the combined investment with the Lady Luck and what it wants to do in the post office block, it's about $1 billion. And you don't pull the trigger on that in three or four months. It takes a lot of time to properly position that, get it all ready and make it work successfully.

I actually started that in Fort Lauderdale. It's based on the fact that it's hard to give preferential treatment to customers over in the development services center. As everybody walks through the front door, you have to treat them all equally, but in business and economic development, you don't. In fact economic development is all about providing preferential treatment to businesses that you want to invest and move into your community. You have to take care of them all the way. The worst thing you can do is attract a business or investor into your community and then not take care of them when it comes time for them to get permits and all the way through the process. It's a linear process, where you start from the day they walk through the door all the way through to the first time they open the door on their new development. You have to make sure they are taking care of all the way through the process and a lot of cities don't do that.

I think the thing that people sometimes miss about what's going on downtown is the true economic impact of what we are doing. We're not just changing the face of the community rather dramatically, we really are fundamental economic development. The beauty of a dense downtown environment is that for the same amount of investment, you get way more return on that investment (than in outlying areas). You get more jobs, you get more private investment, you get more taxes. It's more than just providing more things for the community to do, with a performing arts center and more retail and all of those things. It really is fundamental, bottom-line business development for the city. It is really starting to crank out the jobs and the tax base for this community. It's hard to compete with the Strip, it really is. When you open up a new casino and create 10,000 jobs overnight in one fell swoop, it's hard to compete with that. But at the same time, we're diversifying our economy. When you open a World Market Center you create a whole new kind of job and a whole new economic base that gets away from the gaming industry.