California developer Agora Realty & Management closed on land purchases and financing for a planned $380 million mixed-use development near Las Vegas, on the former site of two casinos.
Plans include housing, retail and a public ice rink managed by the NHL’s Golden Knights to capitalize on the Las Vegas region’s rising sports profile after the NFL, Major League Baseball and Formula One auto racing were lured to the gambling capital.
Agora Realty, based in Calabasas, California, received preliminary regional approvals for the 73-acre project called Hylo Park in North Las Vegas, with plans for 1,300 residential units, a grocery-anchored retail center and other sports and entertainment elements built in multiple phases. The site sits at the intersection of Rancho Road and Lake Mead Boulevard, and the exact mix of rental and for-sale housing units has not been finalized.
A planned centerpiece in the project is Champion Square, a sports village and public plaza with elements including practice facilities and a public ice rink to support the region’s youth and amateur athletes. Agora officials said the sports-anchored component would serve the local community and traveling teams, creating a “lucrative traffic generator” for surrounding restaurants and shops as the region looks to attract more amateur sports tournaments.
“From our longstanding work with North Las Vegas we knew that the city needed more housing and community services for its growing population,” Agora Realty CEO Cary Lefton said in a statement. “We also recognized an opportunity to leverage the draw of Las Vegas’ fast-growing sports industry.”
Like pro sports arenas, facilities hosting regional and national youth and amateur tournaments — in sports such as softball, basketball, soccer and hockey — have generated significant hotel, restaurant and other retail demand in several U.S. cities.
Hotel Development
The city of North Las Vegas announced earlier this year that it had made arrangements with the NHL’s Golden Knights to provide management and future programming for an existing ice arena on the site as part of the Hylo Park development. Agora Realty is looking to develop a hotel next door to the ice arena, among other planned additions.
The Golden Knights play at T-Mobile Arena on the Las Vegas Strip and this year won the NHL’s Stanley Cup championship, just six years after joining the league as an expansion team in 2017. Las Vegas, a city that has since lured the NFL and Formula One auto racing, is looking to further enhance the region’s sports-related commercial demand with the pending relocation of Major League Baseball’s Oakland A’s to a new stadium planned for the Strip.
The Hylo Park mixed-use project arrives as the city of North Las Vegas hopes to boost commercial services for a population that has grown 3.6% annually since the 2020 U.S. census and was already rising before the pandemic. The city for the past decade has posted particularly robust growth in industrial distribution facilities, which have brought jobs to North Las Vegas as e-commerce and other logistics-focused companies seek affordable locations to serve customers across the U.S. West.
“North Las Vegas is primarily known for Nellis Air Force Base and industrial development, but it is also one of the fastest-growing cities in the nation,” said Michael Petrivelli, director of market analytics for CoStar Group in Las Vegas. “This growth has spurred both apartment and single-family construction, but the area has seen very little retail and recreational development to pair with the influx of residents.”
Hylo Park is planned for a 73-acre site that includes the former locations of the Texas Station and Fiesta Rancho hotel-casinos, which were shut down in 2020 during the early months of the pandemic and subsequently demolished by owner Red Rock Resorts. Agora Realty officials said the developer purchased the former casino land sites from Red Rock Resorts for approximately $59 million.
Agora Realty is already among the Las Vegas region’s largest retail developers. It is looking to begin construction on the first elements at Hylo Park, including ice arena improvements, in June 2024, with construction to span over the following 18 months.