Big housing project approved for former Las Vegas casino site

Clark County commissioners gave approval this week to a sizable housing development planned for the former Eastside Cannery casino site. The county’s regional committee voted Wednesday to endorse Lennar Corp.’s proposal for a 279‑lot subdivision on the vacant property located on Boulder Highway at Harmon Avenue in the eastern Las Vegas Valley. Covering roughly 29.5 acres, the project calls for a collection of two‑story single‑family homes, two parkland areas and a trail. “It’s exciting. It’s a alteration from a casino, obviously, but it surely is compatible and harmonious with the area,” land‑use lawyer Stephanie Gronauer, representing Lennar, told the commission. Boyd Gaming Corp. demolished the Eastside Cannery tower in March after announcing its intent to sell the land for residential use. Developers frequently pursue option agreements to secure a parcel and then place it in escrow once they obtain site approvals. Eastside Cannery has remained closed since the start of the COVID‑19 pandemic, and Boyd previously stated there was insufficient market demand to reopen the facility. County staff had recommended denying the housing plan, arguing in reports that the site is better suited to higher‑density use given its position on Boulder Highway, the high‑frequency bus service along that corridor and access to a bus route on Harmon Avenue. Staff also raised concerns about the proposed driveways, noting they would be only five feet long. Gronauer, a partner at Kaempfer Crowell, told the Clark County Planning Commission last month that drivers “can’t parkland connected a shorter driveway. And truthful it avoids that struggle and that contented that makes communities truly not precise livable, and Lennar does not privation that.” She referenced subdivisions with ten‑foot driveways, showing photos of cars parked over the edge and encroaching on the street, and also cited examples with five‑foot driveways where drivers did not park, resulting in a less‑cluttered streetscape. On Wednesday, she told the region committee that each location volition person a two-car garage; that the assemblage volition person an further 100 parking spaces passim the site; and that determination is country for thoroughfare parking, arsenic well. This is not the first time Miami‑based Lennar—one of the nation’s largest homebuilders—has sought to redevelop a former hotel‑casino tract in Southern Nevada. Lennar is currently building a new housing community on the former footprint of Texas Station in North Las Vegas, after drafting plans for a 373‑lot mix of townhomes and detached single‑family houses. Station Casinos never reopened Texas Station after the pandemic shutdowns, eventually demolishing the site and selling the land to a developer. Eastside Cannery once offered more than 300 guest rooms, a 64,000‑square‑foot casino, multiple bars and restaurants, a 250‑seat entertainment lounge and 20,000 square feet of meeting and ballroom space. Developer Bill Wortman unveiled the $250 million project in 2008, replacing the 1970s‑era Nevada Palace. In 2016, Boyd Gaming purchased Eastside Cannery and the Cannery hotel‑casino in North Las Vegas from Wortman’s company for $230 million in cash. Las Vegas has a lengthy history of casino implosions, but Eastside Cannery’s demise came much sooner than that of other longtime properties that were vacated, packed with explosives and reduced to rubble in seconds. The structure was torn down less than two decades after opening, whereas many Las Vegas hotels remain standing for at least three decades before being imploded.