Boarded-up motel on Strip torn down without demolition permit

Clark County officials issued a violation notice this week after a shuttered motel on the Las Vegas Strip was torn down without a demolition permit, records show.

The boarded-up White Sands Motel, across from the Luxor, had been in rough shape for years and long seemed destined for demolition, given its history of vandalism, vagrants and feral cats. It was still standing last year after a North Dakota tribal nation bought it and has since been torn down.

However, Clark County Building Department records online do not show a demolition permit application or a demolition permit issued for the motel structure at 3889 Las Vegas Blvd. South.

The Las Vegas Review-Journal asked county spokeswoman Stacey Welling about this on Tuesday, and she replied hours later that no application for demolition was submitted and that the Building Department opened a code-enforcement case that day for work without permits.

She later confirmed that county officials weren’t aware of the situation until the Review-Journal inquired about it.

Property owner ‘still investigating this concern’

The Building Department issued a notice of violation dated Tuesday stating that an inspection was made at the property, that a demolition permit needs to be provided, and that a grading permit also is needed because of other site work.

Corrective action is required by Jan. 6, and if it is not taken, “legal action will be taken as required by law,” the notice said.

Welling said the contractor will have to pay various fees. She also noted that investigation fees, which are charged at $330 per hour, will be applied.

The Three Affiliated Tribes of the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation, which purchased the site for more than $10 million in spring 2023, is “still investigating this concern,” Chairman Mark Fox told the Review-Journal in an email Wednesday.

The tribal government signed up a locally licensed contractor in Las Vegas to complete the work for the property, he wrote.

He also said the contractor was responsible for acquiring approved permits for the project.

“They have been directed to rectify the situation as part of their contract requirements,” Fox wrote.

The chairman, who holds an elected post, did not answer questions about which contractor was hired to demolish the building or when exactly the structure was torn down.

‘Destroying the property’

The one-story White Sands opened in 1959 during Las Vegas’ Mafia days. It closed more than a decade ago, and problems mounted afterward.

In 2013, Clark County officials received a complaint that the shuttered property had some standing water in the pool and a “strong odor” that smelled like a dead animal or body.

No corpse was found, but an inspector spotted around 40 feral cats, records show.

In 2015, a “declaration of imminent danger” from the county stated that the “unsafe structure” had criminal activity, and feral cats and kittens “were noted in all units.”

“Despite putting up chain link fences and boarding up all doors and windows on the property, it has been very difficult to keep vagrants, trespassers and the animal groups from gaining access to and destroying the property,” according to a letter to the county that year.

The Three Affiliated Tribes — also known as Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara Nation, or MHA Nation — bought the property from the estate of former White Sands owner Spartaco Colleli, who died in 1992.

MHA Nation closed the purchase in April 2023. At the time, Fox said the plan was to tear down the motel.

He didn’t have a time frame but figured it would cost at least $1 million to demolish the structure and clean the site.

Tribal real estate holdings

The former motel parcel is surrounded on three sides by the former Route 91 Harvest festival site, most of which was purchased by MHA Nation in 2022 for nearly $93 million. MHA Nation also bought a neighboring dirt lot in 2020 for $12 million.

All told, the tribal nation purchased 23 acres along the south edge of the Strip for $115 million combined, without concrete plans for the sites or, back home in North Dakota, public votes on most of the spending.

In 2019, the year before MHA Nation started buying real estate in Las Vegas, a tribal council member outlined billions of dollars in spending needs to Congress that ranged from health care and housing to road construction and law enforcement.

Fox, the chairman, has touted the economic opportunities that come with owning land in America’s casino capital, a lucrative yet fiercely competitive tourism market, and has said the tribes’ options include developing a resort or flipping the land to new owners.

Contact Eli Segall at esegall@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0342.

Clark County Notice by Tony Garcia on Scribd