Cashman Center eyed for redevelopment again

Cashman Center would be redeveloped into a medical campus under a plan being eyed by Las Vegas officials, after a new stadium envisioned there never materialized.

The City Council is scheduled Wednesday to consider an exclusive negotiation agreement with Tru Development to study a possible mixed-use medical campus at the 50-acre property. Located at Las Vegas Boulevard and Washington Avenue, the city-owned land is home to a convention center and a stadium where the Las Vegas Lights soccer team plays.

The six-month agreement would have an option for a six-month extension, city documents show.

This isn’t the first time local officials have looked to redevelop the Cashman complex, and city records indicate the current plan might include a children’s hospital.

As stated in the proposed negotiation agreement, the developer is planning a mixed-use campus that would include medical office space, related medical and non-medical facilities, and a medical project to be operated by a nonprofit called the Las Vegas Children’s Hospital Foundation.

The latter is named the “project anchor” in the agreement.

City spokesman Jace Radke said Monday that the measure is “not approved at this point,” so Las Vegas officials will wait to comment until it goes before council members this week.

Tru Development has been involved with multiple apartment projects in Southern Nevada. It was unclear Monday whether the Las Vegas real estate firm or its founder, Tim Deters, had built medical projects before.

Deters could not be reached for comment Monday.

Cashman Center boasts 98,100 square feet of exhibit space, a 10,000-seat baseball and soccer stadium, a 1,922-seat theater, and 14 meeting rooms, according to the city’s website.

At one point, the property was offered for free to Amazon after the e-commerce giant launched a bidding war throughout North America for a new corporate campus.

In the fall 2017 proposal, officials in Southern Nevada offered five big sites around the valley for Amazon’s “HQ2” project, including Las Vegas city-owned property that encompassed the Cashman site.

Amazon ultimately passed on Southern Nevada.

In June 2019, the City Council approved launching talks with The Renaissance Companies on a potential mixed-use project at Cashman that would feature a new stadium for a Major League Soccer expansion franchise.

The plans — which, as shown in renderings at the time, called for a flashy soccer stadium — never materialized.

Renaissance founder Floyd Kephart said Monday that he believes Cashman is the “best development site in Las Vegas” and indicated he looked into adding medical space there, too.

Ultimately, his group couldn’t land a soccer-team ownership group that was acceptable to MLS, and the league did not decide whether to expand there, Kephart said.

Still, he figures a medical campus would work at Cashman, especially if it includes residential and related retail.

“It’s a great use of the property,” he said.

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