LAS VEGAS (KTNV) — Plans to redevelop the Desert Pines Golf Course are another step closer to reality.
On Wednesday, City of Las Vegas council members unanimously agreed to approve a development agreement and related land use entitlements to developer McCormack Baron Salazar Inc.
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We first told you about the city's plans to redevelop several golf courses, including Desert Pines and the Royal Link Golf Club, back in May 2022. In November, we told you about the State Infrastructure Bank approving a $25 million loan to help with the first phase of the Desert Pines project.
“Nevadans deserve ample access to affordable and attainable housing options, and I’m proud to support the largest affordable housing project in Nevada history through the State Infrastructure Bank,” Governor Joe Lombardo said in a November statement. "Through projects like this, we're helping secure the next generation of Nevada homeownership."
According to Dina Babsky, the Director of Urban and Economic Development for the City of Las Vegas, the project will include at least 1,566 units, which will be a mix of affordable housing, mixed-use properties, for-sale townhomes, and for-sale single-family residential homes.
When looking at the site plan above, purple is where mixed-use buildings will be located. One building will be affordable senior housing while the other two will be mixed-income housing.
As you move toward Pecos, you have commercial development and the white space in the top right corner of the development will be where a College of Southern Nevada training center will be located. That is similar to a training center that is already under construction on the west side of town.
Parcel 10 is the recreation and open space area and can see a trail marked in black. In total, there is about 10 acres of recreation space that will be included in the project.
The yellow areas will be single-family attached homes and single-family detached homes, which will be for sale. There are also discussions to possible include an early education center in that part of the development.
When looking at funding, the entire project is estimated to cost $440 million and some funding is already in place.
The Economic Development Administration Grant was awarded by the federal government and representatives will be visiting the site in September with the grant set to finalized this fall.
When looking at a May appraisal report from Southwest Property Consultants, they estimated the 97.94 acres are worth $55.5 million. However, city officials said they are planning to sell the land at $17.45 million.
"The project was specifically structured that way so that in the future, the parcels that are planned to be for-sale market rate housing and sold off to home builders, there will be proceeds generated from those sales, which will be routed back into the affordable housing development at Desert Pines," Babsky explained.
The land will be sold to Desert Pines Master Development LLC, which breaks down to McCormack Baron Salazar Inc. owning 51% and their development partner, Urban Strategies Inc., owning the other 49%.
Dan Falcone, the President of Falcon Groupe Inc., which works with McCormack Baron Salazar, told council members they made changes to development plans in order to better reflect the needs of the community.
"We took a step back and said rather than doing about two-thirds of the project as studios and one-bedrooms, which was the original plan, let's flip that around," Falcone explained. "So we ended up with about two-thirds of the project and two and three-bedroom units. We did fewer units due to space needed and about one-third are for one-bedrooms and we don't have any studios on the site."
And just because some homes in the development will be sold at market rates, Falcone said that doesn't mean they'll be out of reach for first-time or low-income buyers.
"We'll be working with folks on financial structure and financial engineering so that folks that may not make as much can still live there and we can work with them to get them grants and soft dollars so they can live in and buy those homes at market rate," Falcone explained. "We also do that to protect the community because we've learned that homeowners that might be in the area aren't going to be happy if they go to refinance their house and find out a brand-new house down the street is selling for 30% less than your house and the value goes down. We don't want to do that. We want to uplift the community with not just what we're building but the community around us."
It's a model that Council Woman Shondra Summers-Armstrong says she hopes the city continues to follow in the future.
"Your project gives us hope and, hopefully, a template so that the people in this community can cease to be afraid of their neighbors. People are afraid of the word affordable housing. They think it's going to affect them disproportionately and we need folks to understand your neighbor is the person you sit next to in church, it's the person you go to synagogue with, it's the person you go to mosque with. It's the person mixing your coffee. It's the person who is checking out your groceries at the grocery story. They all need housing," Summers-Armstrong said. "If we're not intentional in how we're doing that, they're either going to be homeless, which no one wants to see, or they're going to leave our community, which is another problem altogether."
So what's next?
City officials said the golf course operator, per their lease terms, needs a six-month notice to finalize their work on the site.
"With that timeline, we expect the redevelopment of Desert Pines to take place in June 2026. Once that happens, the very first parcel for affordable housing will break ground in 2027 with the last parcel in Phase I to break ground in 2030," Babsky said. "Phase II will start following that with the overall project to be finished by 2036."
