Olympia project on eve of becoming reality

Olympia Group is scheduled to break ground Wednesday on its large North Las Vegas master-planned community. That's only 13 months after bidding $639 million at a Bureau of Land Management auction for 2,675 undeveloped acres along the I-215 Beltway.

The event comes a month after Olympia representatives and city officials hammered out and presented final details of the design guidelines at a special city council workshop.

"It was trying at times," said Olympia principal Guy Inzalaco of the agreement negotiated during 60 meetings over a seven-month period. "Between the city and us, with always having the vision and desire to have a great community as the end product of what we're working on, it went great."

Olympia's holdings are actually two separate parcels -- the 601-acre western parcel and the 2,074-acre eastern slice -- with a large portion of the Greenspun Corp.'s 1,905-acre Aliante development sandwiched in between.

The project, whose name will be revealed at the ceremony, will start infrastructure construction early this year and model homes will be ready by late 2007. Between land and infrastructure costs, Olympia has committed nearly $1 billion before a single house is built.

The new, north-valley project will be anchored by a 300-acre wildlife preserve, and 102 acres of trails and parks, including a 40-acre regional sports park and eight neighborhood parks.

"I believe we will have more open space than any other master plan in the valley," Inzalaco said. "It will be unique to the valley."

It will be different in at least one other respect. Facing a super-abundance of golf courses in Southern Nevada, Olympia decided to forgo what used to be a standard feature any new master-planned community.

DENSITY TO RISE

Olympia's residential development will be at a considerably higher density than its neighbor Aliante, with some areas as high as 25 units per acre within a village concept. Four separate residential builders -- American West, Astoria Homes, D.R. Horton and Standard Pacific Homes -- will construct a scheduled 15,750 housing units (Aliante is scheduled for 7,000 homes) ranging from 10,000-square-foot custom lots to high-density, mixed-use projects.

"It's dense enough where it's going to take some pretty creative developments," North Las Vegas Mayor Michael Montandon said. "They're going to have to have some four-story, high-density areas around commercial (property). Those types of uses promote lower traffic by being able to put people in a concentration near the commercial."

The high density may be needed to keep homes affordable in a housing market that is beginning to betray a slight pullback. New housing permits showed a 50 percent decrease in the third quarter as new-home prices leveled off.

BUILD OR ELSE

Regardless of where the market goes, new homes will have to continue to be built to absorb the projected population and job growth that are expected with billion-dollar projects. MGM Mirage's CityCenter and Boyd Gaming's Echelon Place are among the mega-projects coming online in the next few years.

"With housing you believe one of two things," said Jeremy Aguero, a principal at Applied Analysis. "You either believe that employment growth is going to slow significantly, or you believe the housing market's going to have to continue to expand in 2007 or (else) you won't have enough houses to put all the people in by 2008."

While the current master plan does not have a gaming component, a 56-acre parcel designated 'resort-commercial' was set aside along the Beltway, at the far east end of the development. Olympia could apply for a gaming overlay for the property at a later date.

"Obviously, in Las Vegas, gaming is key to the valley and it's the economic engine for the valley," Inzalaco said. "Our desire is to locate a resort with gaming as a part of it sometime in the future. It provides not only entertainment, it provides jobs. It's something that the Las Vegas community has embraced. Right now we don't have any immediate plans to move ahead and it's definitely something we'll discuss with the city in the future."

Montandon, who is in the last couple of years of his final term, has been an outspoken opponent of a casino being built on the Olympia site. He insists, however, that the resort designation was not a sticking point during the negotiations because the land is not gaming-enabled.

"There was nothing contentious because they didn't ask for anything other than an amount of commercial that would be consistent with any master plan," he said.