Closed Southern Nevada hotel targeted for industrial park

A shuttered hotel-casino south of Las Vegas is being eyed for demolition to clear space for a big industrial park.

Reno developer Par Tolles’ namesake firm has drawn up plans for a 1.9 million-square-foot warehouse and distribution complex along Interstate 15 in Jean, a remote outpost some 25 miles south of the Strip whose only residents are the inmates at a state prison.

Clark County commissioners are scheduled to consider project plans Wednesday.

The project site covers more than 140 acres around the I-15/state Route 161 intersection, encompassing vacant land and other real estate, including the Terrible’s hotel-casino site.

That property has been closed since the onset of the pandemic, and plans indicate it would be demolished and then replaced with a distribution center, according to a county staff report.

Tolles Development Co. is under contract to buy the sprawling project site and hopes to break ground on the first few buildings within the next 12 to 18 months, partner Cory Hunt told the Review-Journal on Monday.

“We really like the project; we think it’s pioneering,” he said.

Construction ramps up

Truckers coming in from Southern California could drop off products at the industrial park and get back in a one-day round trip, Hunt said. Moreover, the site has access to utility service, according to Hunt, who noted the hotel has water and a waste-water treatment plant.

The hotel won’t get demolished anytime soon; Hunt said it would get torn down a couple of years into the development.

Clark County records and Nevada business-entity filings indicate the entire project site is owned by the Herbst family, operators of the Terrible Herbst gas station chain.

Efforts to speak with a family representative were unsuccessful Monday.

Warehouse developers have been on a yearslong construction spree in Southern Nevada, and business has only ramped up during the coronavirus pandemic.

The outbreak dealt a crushing blow to Las Vegas’ casino-heavy economy but also sparked an accelerated shift to online shopping that has fueled demand for distribution space.

Developers have pushed ahead with big warehouse projects in Southern Nevada amid the pandemic, and investors have been buying buildings.

Tiny desert town

There isn’t much in Jean. As the Review-Journal reported in 2020, it has a cluster of government services and operations, including a small airport, a small courthouse, a small fire station and a small post office.

Its only residents are the prisoners in Jean Conservation Camp, a state facility that houses 240 female inmates.

In 2014, MGM Resorts International reached a deal to sell the former Gold Strike hotel-casino and “related assets” in Jean to the Herbst family for $12 million. The sale closed in 2015.

The new owners launched a series of upgrades at Gold Strike and changed the name in 2018 to the Herbst family’s flagship brand.

The Herbst family also opened a massive travel center in Jean in 2018. Billed as the world’s largest Chevron station, it boasts 96 gas pumps and a 50,000-square-foot convenience store.

It also sits across the highway from the other gas station in town: a Terrible’s truck stop.

Hunt said both gas stations would stay and remain under the Herbsts’ ownership.

Meanwhile, the family had received county commission approval in fall 2020 for a hotel and retail project in Jean. That application would be “expunged” if the commission approves the industrial park, county staff indicated in a report.

Contact Eli Segall at esegall@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0342. Follow @eli_segall on Twitter.