Stretch along Las Vegas Boulevard soon to be apartment complex

A quiet stretch of desert along Las Vegas Boulevard has an apartment complex under construction that is slated to be bigger than a typical rental development in town.

Silicon Valley investor group WTI Inc. is developing Ariva, a 754-unit complex that is expected to feature retail and other commercial space. Work crews broke ground on the apartments in August and are expected to open the first batch of units at the end of 2021, said Las Vegas contractor Sam Nicholson, whose firm was hired by the owner as the project’s development manager.

Overall, the project, off the west side of Las Vegas Boulevard just north of Starr Avenue, is scheduled to be completed in spring 2023, according to Nicholson.

Las Vegas Boulevard is known for its towering, glitzy hotel-casinos, but several miles south of the tourist corridor, closer to the M Resort, the famed roadway is lined with sprawling tracts of land. Developers largely avoided building in the area over the past several years, given the parcels’ sizes and high asking prices.

“There’s not much down there,” said Nicholson, founder of Grand Canyon Development Partners.

But investors bought big chunks of desert along this stretch of the boulevard over the past years, and some housing developments are now underway.

Las Vegas homebuilder Touchstone Living is developing the Mosaic townhome project off Las Vegas Boulevard at St. Rose Parkway, and the area even saw a rare land flip a little over a year ago, before the coronavirus pandemic upended daily life and sparked huge job losses in Las Vegas.

Two local investors bought around 63 acres just south of the Ariva site for $44.2 million in September 2019 from a development firm that had purchased the land the year before.

Ariva, meanwhile, has been in the works for more than three years. As Nicholson noted, a typical garden-style apartment complex is half its size or less.

WTI, a real estate holding company in Cupertino, California, obtained Clark County approval of its apartment plans in June 2017. The group closed its purchase of the site the next month, buying 46.6 acres of land for about $24.5 million, records showed.

Previously known as The Arch, Ariva is slated to feature two penthouses, four pools and a large fitness center, Nicholson said. He expects to break ground on its roughly 71,000 square feet of commercial space around June.

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