Station Casinos buys more land for $55M, plans another resort

Station Casinos has fattened its land holdings in Southern Nevada after it landed approvals for another new resort.

The locals-focused casino chain purchased nearly 67 acres at the northwest corner of Losee Road and the 215 Beltway in North Las Vegas for $55 million, property records show. The sale was recorded with the county on Monday.

Station’s plans for the site, in the Villages at Tule Springs master-planned community, call for 600 hotel rooms and more than 75,700 square feet of casino space, as well as restaurants, a movie theater, bowling alley, banquet facilities and other amenities, records show.

Station declined to comment.

The North Las Vegas City Council approved its project plans last month, following the Planning Commission’s green light in September.

The company, which owns big tracts of real estate scattered around the Las Vegas Valley that are essentially in storage for future casinos, has set out to overhaul its presence in the region.

It is building a $750 million resort in the southwest valley called Durango and has said it’s working on plans for other big plots of land, with the goal of doubling its portfolio by 2030.

Station started tearing down some hotels that never reopened after the pandemic and intends to sell the sites. It also unveiled plans to demolish the Wild Wild West hotel-casino near the Strip and redevelop the property.

Last week, it sold 21 acres of excess land next to the Durango project for nearly $24 million to an apartment developer.

Long-term outlook

Scott Kreeger, president of Station parent Red Rock Resorts, told the Review-Journal this fall that its Losee project was further down the development pipeline.

Before it develops the North Las Vegas resort, it might first break ground on projects in Henderson’s Inspirada community, in the upper northwest valley’s Skye Canyon community, or at Las Vegas Boulevard and Cactus Avenue several miles south of the Strip, Kreeger said.

Station owns land in growing master-planned communities around Southern Nevada, and Kreeger noted Tule Springs is poised to see more development as well.

“We think long term, that’s a very dynamic growth area for residential and business,” he said. “As that area matures, we’re well positioned to take advantage of that.”

Three builders are currently developing projects in Tule Springs that will bring more than 8,500 homes to the community, including 2,000 homes for people aged 55 and over, according to Tule Springs developer Pacific Oak Strategic Opportunity REIT.

Pacific Oak announced last week that it completed the sale of 67 acres in the Villages at Tule Springs for $55 million “to an undisclosed buyer,” and that the land “includes rights to build mixed-use commercial buildings, including a casino.”

Pacific Oak had acquired 1,670 acres in what’s now Tule Springs, and the recent sale marked the second-to-last available plot of land it owned in the community, it said in a news release.

Efforts to get comments from Pacific Oak were unsuccessful Tuesday.

Demo and development

Station expects to develop the Losee project in phases.

The first would include 200 hotel rooms, restaurants, three resort-style pools, a 48,000-square-foot casino floor and a tavern on the corner of the property, Station representative Rebecca Miltenberger told the North Las Vegas City Council at a Nov. 16 hearing.

The second phase would include more hotel rooms and dining space and expand the casino and entertainment areas, said Miltenberger, real estate attorney with Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck.

She did not provide a timeline for the project.

At the hearing, then-Mayor John Lee said he welcomed the additional entertainment and hotel space.

“A lot of people go down the freeway now and see the VA hospital and think it’s a casino,” he said, referring to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs medical center just east of Station’s site. “So I think this is something positive for the area. I’m looking forward to something like this coming to our community.”

The Culinary Union, which has butted heads with Station for years, said the casino operator did not “establish clear and convincing evidence” that the resort would not adversely affect the community.

Ken Liu, research director for Culinary Local 226, pointed to Station’s closures of Texas Station and Fiesta Rancho in North Las Vegas.

“This has meant the loss of hundreds of jobs in the city,” he told council members last month.

Station’s parent company announced this summer it would tear down those properties and Fiesta Henderson, all of which had been closed since the onset of the pandemic, and sell the land.

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