An artist rendering shows a pedestrian and bicycle-friendly environment during a Las Vegas Medical District Successes & Insights event at Las Vegas City Hall Tuesday, Aug. 23, 2022. The event was organized by the City of Las Vegas and the Downtown Vegas Alliance.
Thursday, Aug. 25, 2022 | 2 a.m.
Close to half a billion dollars has been committed to refreshing the Las Vegas Medical District as regional leaders position Southern Nevada as a destination for more medical professionals to train, work and live.
The nearly complete building for UNLV’s Kirk Kerkorian School of Medicine, a $150 million project, isn’t the only major new feature of the district, which includes the county-run University Medical Center, the private Valley Hospital and several clinics within its 674-acre envelope just west of downtown.
At a presentation Tuesday at Las Vegas City Hall, planners, developers and medical executives outlined how the corridor would look and feel within the next few years.
The district’s core is bound by Charleston Boulevard, Rancho Drive, Alta Drive and Interstate 15, with tentacles reaching as far west as Valley View Boulevard and Charleston, and as far north as Martin Luther King Boulevard and the U.S. 95.
It also includes the Symphony Park area, immediately east of I-15 near the Smith Center.
“You’ve seen hundreds of millions of dollars are already being infused in the Las Vegas Medical District. Over the next five or 10 years it’s going to be billions,” said Tabitha Pederson, an economic development specialist for the city of Las Vegas. “You will see demand increase even more than it already has. You’re going to see property values increase. You’ll see people living and walking to work in the district.”
Here are five takeaways from the presentation:
Infrastructure improvements
Mike Janssen, executive director of infrastructure for the city, said the area would see $130 million in road reconstruction, sidewalk widening, traffic signals, brighter lighting, bus pullouts and utility upgrades, including moving power lines underground.
“The last place that we want to have a windstorm knock out power is in the medical district, and what do we have in the medical district? Ugly overhead lines. Very susceptible to wind,” he said. “A major part of our project is taking those overhead power lines (and) putting them underground where they’re going to be safer, more secure.”
Widening the sidewalks from a single-file, 3-to-5 feet to a roomy 10-to-15 feet will encourage pedestrians, he said. More street lighting will illuminate the round-the-clock activity.
Traffic signals on Pinto Lane at Shadow Lane and Rancho, and Charleston at Tonopah and Westwood drives, will make travel safer for people in cars and on foot. And the city may drop the speed limit on the district’s stretch of Charleston from 45 mph to 30 or 35 mph.
The improvements underway at Shadow and Pinto should be complete in September. Work will begin in January on the sidewalks and medians along Charleston.
Living and lodging
Janssen says improvements set for the 2-mile stretch of Rancho between Sahara Avenue and U.S. 95, which are set to begin in early 2024, are meant to attract health care workers to adjacent neighborhoods. The city is planning sidewalk, lighting and shade tree upgrades here as well, and it has acquired a pocket of land at Rancho and Oakey Boulevard for a park.
“Folks that are working in the medical district, this is the place to live,” Janssen said.
In the district’s northeast corner, developers plan to break ground within the next two months on a mixed-use complex featuring more than 500 housing units, office and retail spaces in two towers, one reaching five stories and the other 22 stories. Developers also plan to begin building a 440-room hotel within the next six months.
Projects at the permitting or more advanced stages — including the 135,000-square-foot med school, which is set to open in October, and a 54-bed facility for people with dementia and Alzheimer’s disease set to open in January — are worth a combined $358 million, said Seth Floyd, the city’s director of community development.
Driverless shuttles
Starting next summer, driverless shuttles will ferry riders, free of charge, around the medical district and as far east as the Bonneville Transit Center in downtown Las Vegas, Janssen said. The $7.4 million “GoMed” system will be funded, by federal and local transit authority dollars, for at least three and a half years. The circuit will include four autonomous vehicles and 23 shelters.
UMC facelift
Shana Tello, the administrator for academic and external affairs at UMC, said the hospital was in the pre-construction phase of a facade revitalization. The project, which she estimated would cost more than $50 million, will put new exteriors on all nine buildings on the sprawling UMC campus.
The newest of UMC’s buildings is 3 years old. The oldest was built 66 years ago.
“You can imagine there’s not a very cohesive look right now,” Tello said. “Some people don’t even associate the buildings as being all part of UMC.”
She said the new facades would better reflect the innovation and work going on inside.
Other aesthetic upgrades include two “healing gardens” for patients and families, refreshed landscaping and new signage.
General beautification
Janssen said the city would plant more mature trees along the newly widened sidewalks so pedestrians don’t have to wait as long for saplings to grow in, and Charleston will get a landscaped median where it enters the district. Public art is also poised to have a big moment, as Floyd said the city was considering making it a requirement for new developments.
John Curran, senior vice president for development for local real estate investment firm Prospect Street and also a city arts commissioner, said he would pitch the commission next month on investing $450,000 in public art throughout the district.
“I think it goes a long way in terms of placemaking and improving the pedestrian realm, and building the community that people identify with,” he said.
