27 April 2007

Charlie Palmer hotel-condo planned for Union Park

By Valerie Miller -- The Charlie Palmer Hotel could finally be coming to Las Vegas. The celebrity chef plans on developing the first condo-hotel in Union Park. The 426-room non-gaming resort will include at least 100 condo-hotel rooms.

The Las Vegas City Council will vote May 2 on whether to sign an exclusive negotiating agreement with Palmer’s local entity, Palmer City-Core Union Park Hotel.

The city, through its non-profit City Parkway V, is proposing a land sale price of $9.8 million for the 3.1-acre site in the heart of Union Park. That works out to about $72 per square foot, or $3.2 million per acre. The price was an average of two fair-market appraisals, according to Scott Adams, the city’s director of business development.
Charlie Palmer has a string of restaurants across the country, including one at the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino.

The planned Charlie Palmer Hotel will be serving a niche market, according to City-Core Development President Richard Kaufman. San Francisco-based City-Core has formed a joint venture with Charlie Palmer to develop the site.

“Our buyers and hotel guests will be people who visit Las Vegas and want a five-star experience in a non-gaming environment. Condo-buyers and guests need that five-star experience in downtown,” he maintained.

The new resort will cost at least $150 million to build and bring in $1 million-$1.5 million a year to the redevelopment agency upon completion, Adams said. It was too soon for the city to discuss any possible redevelopment tax-increment financing, he added.

The resort would create 300-350 hotel and restaurant jobs, along with “hundreds of construction-related jobs,” Kaufman noted.

The Charlie Palmer Hotel will include a 10,000-square-foot spa and a “Hollywood-style pool,” along with two Charlie Palmer’s restaurants. A sky terrace restaurant will overlook Union Park’s planned Symphony Park, the company said.

The project will have a “fair amount of retail,” according to Adams, although he didn’t have specific numbers.

Charlie Palmer’s move could help all of Union Park’s developers. The entire site could be a tourism draw, and will likely be considered for a Tourism Improvement District designation, Adams said. That status could qualify some developers for retail sales tax rebates.

The director of business development saw the Charlie Palmer development as a catalyst for Union Park. “It’s an exciting project,” Adams said, noting that city officials had convinced Palmer and his development partner City-Core, to build at Union Parkl. Palmer had originally been looking for a location near the Strip.

This will be Palmer’s second try and building a Las Vegas hotel. A deal was in the works last year for the celebrity chef to build a $400 million, 33-floor, 400-unit condo hotel on the site of the rundown, and now-shuttered, Golden Palms Hotel-Casino. That project was supposed to open by 2008, but the deal fell through. Kaufman wasn’t involved with the Golden Palms endeavor, but did offer that the downtown project was “totally different.”

The city is very happy with Palmer’s selection of Union Park, Adams offered. He expects the project to move along quickly. “I think we could roll in 2008,” he said of the estimated groundbreaking.

Kaufman promised the Charlie Palmer Hotel would dazzle the city used to glitz. “We think we are doing something very special and nothing has ever been done like this in Las Vegas.”