Ten years ago there was a stretch of desert located 17 miles from the Las Vegas Strip and it was simply that — an empty stretch of desert, 17 miles from the middle of Las Vegas. At that time, the property was considered too far out to be of interest visitors or residents.
But into the desert came Ronald Boeddeker, with a vision of the haven the area could become and the foresight to realize that 17 miles wouldn’t always be that far from the city. In addition, Boeddeker realized that as urban sprawl reduced perceived distance from the city, the distance would become that much more important. Not everyone would want to be in the city all the time. Some people would see the location’s remoteness as a plus. Also, research convinced Boeddeker the baby boomers and nouveau riche were coming into financial security and wanted to add to that security in their homes. The setting of lake front property in a gated community lent itself nicely. And demographics have proved him right. The average age of the buyers at Lake Las Vegas Resort is 47. Entrepreneurs are drawn there as well, technology lending a hand as executives can live anywhere and work out of virtual offices, move out of the urban sprawl and conduct their business from a beautiful home in a secure environment.
Boeddeker formed Transcontinental Properties in 1976. A privately held California corporation, owned by Transcontinental Corporation of Santa Barbara, the company conducts its business in partnerships and subsidiary corporations with entities owned by Lee and Sid Bass of Fort Worth, Texas. The company has other projects, including Lake Arrowhead in Southern California and a project in Hawaii. But for Las Vegas, Boeddeker had a dream of creating a water community, right in the middle of a desert.
In order to realize that dream, he had to create a lake where none existed. Construction of the 18-story earthen Henderson Dam allowed an allocated amount of water from Lake Mead to form the lake itself, which could then support its own ecosystem. The dam is considered an engineering feat, measuring 4,800 feet in length and 716 feet in width at its base. It contains nearly 2.5 million cubic yards of earth. The dam allowed Boeddeker to create Nevada’s largest privately-owned man-made lake.
Today, 10 years later, in place of a two-mile strip of desert, there are 10 miles of shoreline and 320 acres of water. Two miles long and one mile wide, Lake Las Vegas is one of the largest man-made lakes on the West Coast, and it’s situated in the middle of a desert. “Water makes us so unique,” says Sherri O’Boyle, vice president of marketing for Lake Las Vegas Resort. “We see water as an extremely important recreational opportunity for our guests and visitors, most obviously because there’s not a lot of it for people to enjoy in the desert other than Lake Mead. We’re different because we’re a quiet water environment, due to no motor boats, but we’ll have a full service marina for sailboats and non-motorized vehicles on the water. Even if [people] don’t want to play in the water they want to live by the water.” Those who do want to jump in and play can enjoy swimming, sailing, kayaking, canoeing and wind surfing, but to preserve the lake and the peace of its surroundings, motored vehicles are prohibited.
Adding to the master plan’s allure are two Jack Nicklaus-designed golf courses. The first of the courses opened in December 1995 and has remained popular with residents and guests alike. At 6,925 yards, the SouthShore Golf Club uses the topography of the area to create a unique course with elevations that rise to 1,750 feet and fall to 1,200. The course is par 71. The SouthShore Golf Club mixed desert plants into the greens, which are a hybrid Bermuda grass on the fairways and roughs and bent grass on the greens.
The second course to open at the resort, the Reflection Bay Golf Club, is another Jack Nicklaus course that opened in May of 1998. The 7,261-yard course follows the contours of its desert home. Three more courses are planned to go with the fully stocked pro shop and waterside gourmet restaurant located at the Reflection Bay Golf & Beach Club. “We were under-golfed 10 years ago,” says O’Boyle. “In the last five to six years we’ve been developing, the number has doubled, so we weren’t the only ones who saw golf as a pull for real estate. Even six years ago the city of Las Vegas was under-golfed for visitors coming into town who want to golf.”
But Lake Las Vegas is more than the lake and the golf. The resort encompasses the integration of high-end secure residential neighborhoods, private residences, upscale commercial venues such as shopping centers and restaurants, and resort hotel destinations. Also, the resort is a comfortable distance from the Strip, so residents and
visitors can enjoy the entertainment and the gaming, yet leave it all behind at bedtime.
There’s a Mediterranean theme to the $4 billion, 2,245-acre residential and resort community. The resort is surrounded by federally protected land, keeping it private. Nearby is Lake Mead Recreation Area, one of the largest recreation areas in the country, and the Rainbow Gardens Geological Preserve. The communities include SouthShore, with its views of the lake, golf courses, cityscapes and mountain vistas, and MonteLago, a 1,370-acre development on the north side of the lake that promises to be Nevada’s first international lakeside resort hotel destination.
For those who aren’t just visiting, custom home sites dot the landscape, lots selling from the low $300,000s to $1.75 million for home sites nestled in the foothills in SouthShore’s 550-acre gated community. Five different communities offer land, including the Barcelona, adjacent to the eight hole at SouthShore, the Biarritz, executive home sites surrounded by fairways, and the Marseilles, a private, gated community selling lots in sizes from 21,000 to 58,000 square feet. The community’s custom home sites are 85 percent sold out, but with no requirements for buyers to build within a set time, the view corridor is open and free. The homes that have been built, says O’Boyle, are magnificent, 5,000- and 6,000-square-foot homes at SouthShore, with average prices of $1.2 million to $2 million. Semi-custom homes join the customs in independent neighborhoods, production homes with flexible floor plans and price tags that make them somewhat more affordable. Production homes in the resort run $450,000 to $650,000, making them appealing to a greater segment of the population.
“Our first production project by AmStar Universal was the Bella Vivente, a huge success, our first production home neighborhood in SouthShore,” says O’Boyle. “We had such pent up demand because [the homes] started at the $450,000 to $650,000 price range, so they were certainly more affordable for a larger percentage of the population to move in. We sold out in a year.” The second residential offering, the PortaCielo, came into the market in 1999, averaging homes in the $650,000 range and selling just as quickly.
The Hyatt Hotel opened in December, and marked the integration of commercial, hotel and residential, as well as being the resort’s first introduction as an international resort destination. Woodbine Development Corp. developed the 496-room hotel, whose architecture blends with the rest of Lake Las Vegas, utilizing Mediterranean terra cotta colors and ornamental ironwork.
The centerpiece for the hotel is the lake itself. The lake everyone told Boeddeker could never be built. Out of the desert has come a lake, answering one man’s vision.
For more information on Lake Las Vegas, check out the development’s Web site at lakelasvegas.com.
