Last fall, the developers of a stalled casino project faced some harsh words at a Clark County Commission meeting.
When the team behind Dream Las Vegas asked for more time on its approvals again, Commissioner Jim Gibson said the situation “can’t go on forever,” that officials want projects they “really believe will happen” and the likelihood of more extensions down the road was “remote.”
Now the developers are back with yet another request for more time — after county officials were told multiple times over the past two years that the developers were closing in on financing and planning to restart the still-stalled project.
Clark County commissioners on Wednesday are scheduled to consider a request for a third extension of the Dream hotel-casino project near the southern edge of the Strip. The developers, from Southern California, broke ground in the summer of 2022, but construction crews quit less than a year later with the developers paying tens of millions of dollars.
County staff recommended denying the latest extension request, writing in a report that the project, under the terms of an agreement with the county, is classified as abandoned.
Dream developer Bill Shopoff could not be reached for comment last week.
However, he said in an interview in August — after he transferred ownership of the site to Dream’s general contractor following a legal settlement over unpaid bills — that the project kept getting delayed amid volatile financing markets.
He cited higher borrowing costs and bank closures, as a wave of lender failures ravaged the economy a few years ago.
He also said his group intended to buy back the property from the contractor and build the resort.
“But I’ll tell you it’s been hard,” he said.
“They will get paid”
Shopoff, founder of Shopoff Realty Investments, and David Daneshforooz, founder of real estate firm Contour, teamed up to acquire their project site for $21 million.
They closed the deal and announced plans for Dream in February 2020 — the month before the coronavirus pandemic turned lives upside down and shut down much of the economy overnight.
Clark County commissioners approved plans for a 20-story, 527-room hotel-casino in fall 2021, and developers held a ceremonial groundbreaking in summer 2022.
The Dream, on Las Vegas Boulevard just south of Russell Road, was designed to offer a smaller, boutique-style experience in a corridor dominated by massive resorts with thousands of rooms each, huge casino floors and long lists of amenities.
Construction started but eventually stopped.
The general contractor, McCarthy Building Companies, filed a lien in March 2023, claiming more than $40 million was owed for work on the site. Several subcontractors, including electrical, steel and drilling companies, also filed liens, the Las Vegas Review-Journal previously reported.
Shopoff told the newspaper in March 2023 that he was owed about $25 million to $30 million for work on the resort, that construction had “completely stopped” and that work would restart once financing terms were cleared.
At the time, he said he expected to finalize terms potentially within the next few weeks and that his group fully intended to honor their agreement and pay their builders.
“They will get paid, and the project will be built,” he said.
“Complete restart of the build”
Months later, the developers asked the county for a one-year extension on their plans.
Land use attorney Tony Celeste of the law firm Kaempfer Crowell, which represents Dream’s developers, told the county in a letter dated Oct. 4, 2023, that his clients expected to close financing deals in December, with a “full restart of construction” on Jan. 1, 2024, county records show.
Shopoff Realty’s senior vice president of design and construction, Bill Smith, told county officials in a Jan. 10, 2024 email that his team planned to close on a construction loan by the end of February and that McCarthy would resume construction around March 1.
However, the project site stood still.
Celeste wrote in a Sept. 13, 2024, letter that his clients were in discussions with “multiple capital partners” and expected a new loan in the fourth quarter, “with construction beginning shortly thereafter.”
He also wrote that the developers had completed about 19 percent of construction on the project and invested more than $123 million.
Dream’s developers sought a two-year extension to their plans. But the County Commission only approved an extra nine months after Gibson, whose district includes the site, made a motion at the Nov. 20, 2024 meeting for the shorter time frame.
“We know there are outstanding balances to be paid to contractors and subcontractors. … That’s important to us,” Gibson said. “We care that all this money is paid on time.”
He noted that the extension gave them more time to restart the project but that the likelihood of another extension “is remote.”
He also said the county would need regular reports to continue “on the pursuit of the funding.”
Gibson did not respond to requests for comment.
Financing plans
Celeste told the county in a Jan. 9 letter that the developers were negotiating a term of land for “remaining project capital” and expected to restart construction in the second quarter.
He wrote on July 3 that his clients expected construction to resume by the third quarter.
Since Aug. 18, when the developers requested their third extension, Celeste wrote that they were in “final escrow” with four lenders on a loan expected to close in the next four to six weeks.
The loan would satisfy all outstanding payments to the general contractor and other suppliers, he wrote.
He added that the developers were also in negotiations with three “equity providers,” or investors, and that his clients expected to wrap up those talks in the next two to three months, so they could finalize their financing structure.
This, he added, would allow the general contractor to restart construction in the fourth quarter.
Celeste did not respond to a request for comment.
In September 2020, Clark County commissioners denied an extension request for an extreme sports park south of the Strip that never got off the ground.
At the time, the county’s planning director at the time, Nancy Amundsen, confirmed that the vote effectively killed those plans and that the developer would have to submit a new application if he wanted to build a larger project on the site again.
“Continued to promise new loans and financing”
McCarthy now owns the partially built Dream site.
The construction company had sued Dream’s ownership group in Clark County District Court in the summer of 2023 to seek a judgment for the principal amount it was owed.
McCarthy wrote in a court filing that it was paid regularly until September 2022, when the developers stopped paying the construction company’s invoices “due to an alleged lack of funds and ‘circumstances beyond their control.’
It also alleged in the court filing that the developers “continued to promise new loans and financing” with hopes of restarting the project, “to no avail.”
According to a court filing this spring, a settlement was reached in the case but could not be finalized until August 20.
The deed of ownership of the property was registered with the county on 21 August.
“You are the leaders”
Even before the financing problems, Dream faced many obstacles.
The pandemic crippled Las Vegas’ tourism-dependent economy just weeks after developers announced their plans, with the Strip becoming a ghost town with shuttered resorts and unemployment soaring above 30 percent at one point.
The developers also made a number of design changes, including improved security measures, after facing concerns from the Transportation Security Administration and major airlines due to the site’s proximity to the Las Vegas airport.
The TSA, for example, worried that the project would increase risks to aircraft and passengers “because of active shooters and the ability to throw things over the fence.” The agency also feared Dream’s proposed service road would make its border with the airport more susceptible to bombs hidden in such vehicles as garbage trucks, county records show.
Dream’s developers also found that the pinball arcade next door was a little too close.
The Pinball Hall of Fame opened in a newly constructed facility on Las Vegas Boulevard in the spring of 2021 but encroached at least eight feet onto the Dream’s property, according to a lawsuit filed by the hotel’s developer.
Pinball’s attorneys pointed to a possible measurement error by a contractor, court records show.
The case was settled.
The Dream was poised to bring a burst of commerce to a stretch of Las Vegas Boulevard that has megaresorts like Mandalay Bay and Luxor on one side of the street and a drastically different landscape on the other.
That side of the street includes the Dream project as well as low-rise motel properties, some retail space, empty lots and a never-completed Ferris wheel project that for more than a decade now has consisted of two giant concrete pillars jutting out of the ground.
Gibson alluded to the area’s mixed landscape at Dream’s groundbreaking event more than three years ago.
“We have some work to do to finish this part of the strip, and … you are the leaders,” he said.
Contact Eli Segall at esegall@ theplayerlounge.com or 702-383-0342.
