The downtown casino owner purchased the site several years ago, when Symphony Park had much more empty land than it does today.
Long after the city of Las Vegas acquired a former railyard to redevelop it, the site now known as Symphony Park has been largely built out.
It features cultural venues and upscale apartment complexes, and more projects are under construction or otherwise in the works at the mixed-use spread of land downtown. But the biggest vacant parcel in Symphony Park is owned by Las Vegas casino boss Derek Stevens, who hasn’t unveiled plans for the site.
His plot is separated only by train tracks from the parking garage at his towering Circa resort, and Mayor Shelley Berkley said in her recent State of the City address that a Stevens-developed casino in Symphony Park is “in our future.”
“Stay tuned for more details as this exciting project unfolds,” the city’s website declares.
Stevens, however, told the Las Vegas Review-Journal that it’s too early to say what he may build on his 6.4-acre site, adding he wants to see neighboring projects take shape first.
He purchased the site in 2017, when Symphony Park had much more empty land than it does today.
“When you see all of these other projects coming to fruition … that’s going to help form, in my mind, what needs to go on to our property,” he told the Review-Journal on April 29, the day before Berkley’s speech.
‘Put something nice together’
Stevens, who owns three hotel-casinos in downtown Las Vegas, noted that his team designed Circa’s Garage Mahal with cutouts to allow for pedestrian and vehicular connections to be built over the train tracks to Symphony Park.
But he wants to see how the area grows and evolves, which will give him an opportunity to “put something nice together,” he said.
“We could do a much better job a couple years from now once we see how all of this starts developing,” Stevens said.
Union Pacific Railroad operated a 61-acre fueling and maintenance yard in Las Vegas for 70 years, starting in the early 1900s. The site was contaminated by petroleum, solvents and metals, but Union Pacific cleaned the property through a state-approved plan, according to the Nevada Division of Environmental Protection.
The city acquired the property in 2000 to turn it into a mixed-use development and later obtained funding for continued implementation of a soil and groundwater management plan, according to the state.
Symphony Park, located along Grand Central Parkway at Bonneville Avenue, is home to The Smith Center for the Performing Arts, Discovery Children’s Museum and the Cleveland Clinic Lou Ruvo Center for Brain Health.
Developers also built two upscale apartment complexes there in recent years, Parc Haven and Auric, and more projects are underway.
‘New hotel-casino’
Dallas real estate firm Jackson-Shaw recently announced that its five-story hotel project in Symphony Park — a dual-branded AC Hotel and Element property — is slated to open in September.
Nashville-based Southern Land Co., which developed Auric, also is building a 22-story residential tower and five-story apartment complex in Symphony Park. Both are slated to open in late summer or early fall, development manager Alex Woodin recently said.
Red Ridge Development founder Patrick Brennan held a ceremonial groundbreaking on April 29 for a $450 million project in Symphony Park that is slated to feature a 32-story condo tower, five-story apartment building and retail and office space.
City officials also are working on plans for the new Las Vegas Museum of Art in Symphony Park, said Dina Babsky, Las Vegas’ director of economic and urban development.
Plus, officials are excited to have Stevens and his team “planning a new hotel-casino” on the north end of the park, she said.
Stevens already has a commanding presence downtown. He owns the D Las Vegas and the Golden Gate, and in 2020 he opened Circa, downtown’s first newly built hotel-casino in four decades.
He also bought a shuttered courthouse at auction for $10 million, tore it down and opened the Downtown Las Vegas Events Center in 2014.
Over the years, the venue has hosted concerts, large-scale sports viewing parties, and boxing matches, including a Don King-promoted fight in 2015 that aired on Showtime.
At the time, King said Stevens had “revitalized” downtown.
“He’s a daring guy,” King said.
