Friday, Nov. 8, 1996 | 11:59 a.m.
A Denver developer will enter the Las Vegas commercial office market with a $32 million Class A office complex.
The Pauls Corp. and GE Investments are building City Center West, a two-building, five-story, 217,000-square-foot development on the southeast corner of Lake Mead Boulevard and Tenaya Way, near the entrance to Summerlin.
Scheduled to open in June, the property features a 21,120-square-foot floor plan, covered parking, fiber-optic communications, state-of-the-art energy management systems and high-speed gearless traction elevators.
City Center West also will be one of the few properties built in the past three years without a pre-leasing requirement.
"That's the way we do business," said Pauls Corp. President William Pauls, who was named 1996 Man Of The Year in Commercial Real Estate by the Denver Business Journal.
Other Pauls Corp. ventures include:
* The Denver Technological Center, an 870-acre master-planned mixed-use office parks in Denver and Greenwood Village, Colo.
* Meridian International Business Center, a 1,158-acre mixed-use business park near Denver.
* Technology Park/Atlanta, consisting of mixed-use developments in the Atlanta area.
* San Diego Princess Resort in San Diego.
The company also has built several mixed-use developments in Houston.
The Pauls Corp. starting looking at Las Vegas about a year ago. Although most of the company's markets are larger than Las Vegas, it was the strong local economy that convinced the company to build here.
"We like cities with solid job growth. The success of our business depends on job growth which creates the demand for office space. But we decided to start here with a smaller quantity," Pauls said.
"We could have designed a larger single building on site but decided to be somewhat prudent. We'll do the first building and when it's absorbed, we'll build the second, hopefully in six months. Clearly, we'd like to do other things in Las Vegas."
The project is also a 90-day wonder -- the planning process didn't start until the property went into escrow in August.
Site plans, building plans, marketing plans, approvals and permits were all completed in three months.
It's not something that could be accomplished in most cities, according to Pauls. He said that in many places, plans languish in planning offices.
"It's easier here. In every instance, plans were expedited and when we encountered obstacles there was always a can-do attitude instead of the other way. That's the reason we were able to do it," he said.
The area in which City Center West is located is zoned for commercial use. In 1990, the site had been approved for a small one-story shopping center, which apparently fell through, according to Senior City Planner Rod Allison.
"Everything's pretty standard about this project. They've met all the conditions and there aren't any problems that we can see. Although they're only required to have 540 on-site parking spaces under the zoning code, they're going to have 870," he said, adding that Lake Mead Boulevard in that area is able to handle the impact of any additional traffic created by the new complex.
Las Vegas-based Stuart Mixer Commercial-Oncor International helped locate the site and is doing the project's leasing and marketing.
Senior Office Broker John McKeown started looking for tenants Thursday.
"It's certainly not going to be difficult to find them. We've been getting plenty of calls," he said, adding that Class A office space is hard to find in the city because it's difficult to get the properties built.
He referred to the numerous pre-leasing signs seen around town on vacant lots as an indicator of the problem.
"A company who comes in and needs an office needs it now. They can't afford to wait for a year or longer for the property to be built. But it's very difficult to finance properties built on speculation. Up until now, Howard Hughes and Thomas and Mack are the only companies in town who have," he said.
The office space ranges from an 1,800-square-foot suite to a full floor of 21,000 square feet to a complete 105,000-square-foot building.
GE Investments is the wholly owned investment adviser of General Electric, which currently manages a $54 billion portfolio of institutional investments, including $4 billion in real estate holdings.
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