Contractors work in April at The District near Green Valley Ranch Resort. The District, a mixed-use complex in Henderson, combines retail shops, restaurants, office buildings and 80 condominiums. Photo by Isaac Brekken. Don Fisher and Kaylee Freienmuth relax at The District near Green Valley Ranch Resort. The District's second phase, which will consist of 104,500 square feet of office-over-retail space, is already under way. Photo by Isaac Brekken.

Mixed-use development, which typically combines retail, office and residential land use into one high-density site, has been the rage in Las Vegas lately.

East Bay Construction of Huntington Beach, Calif., is requesting final development plan review from the city of North Las Vegas for Commercial Lofts 3, a mixed-use project that incorporates a small warehouse, office and residence all within a single unit. Plans call for 44 units on five acres at the corner of Clayton and Colton avenues.

Kayne Nelson, an Australian who formed East Bay, said Commercial Lofts 3 caters to the entrepreneur with two or three employees who needs a place to operate that is both cost-effective and efficient. The project would also attract larger corporations that require storage, office space and accommodation for sales staff, he said.

"There's a lot of retail with office on top, but certainly not for an industrial-type client. There's not much of that," he said. "Holsum Lofts was more toward professional types. These are for blue-collar companies as well."

Jeff LaPour, developer of Holsum Lofts, had planned to include four to eight residential lofts over retail and office at the former bakery on Charleston Boulevard, near the downtown arts district. But he scrapped the residences as infeasible.

"Our product was going to be rental only. We didn't want to sell," he said. "What we found out really quickly is the rental market for our size and rents just wasn't there. Sales demand was there all day, but that was not part of our program."

Excluding purchases by hotel and gaming companies, there were 48 sales of mixed-use and high-rise sites in the valley last year totaling $1.3 billion, said Geoffrey West, vice president of CB Richard Ellis in Las Vegas. That's up from 31 sales totaling $631.7 million in 2004.

The difference between the amount spent on land by gaming companies and nongaming companies was $400 million, West noted.

The average price per acre for these sites rose from $3.5 million to $5.4 million. Proximity to the Strip, the core employment and entertainment area, is key to making economic sense out of those kinds of prices, Jeremy Green of CB Richard Ellis said.

Green said about 2 million square feet of industrial space is being displaced from the service corridor west of the Strip and several gaming companies, including Harrah's Entertainment and Station Casinos, have assembled large land parcels in the area.

The District at Green Valley Ranch Resort, a development by American Nevada Co. is recognized as Las Vegas' first mixed-use development outside of Strip hotels. The District, off the Las Vegas Beltway at Green Valley Parkway, combines shops, restaurants, office buildings and 80 condominiums.

Some experts scoffed when American Nevada decided to sell the units at $500 a square foot instead of renting them. They wondered who would pay such a price, but the units sold briskly.

American Nevada has begun construction on The District's second phase, which will consist of 104,500 square feet of office-over-retail space in six buildings, with no residences. The second phase will have a public plaza reminiscent of an East Coast urban park that will serve as a venue for concerts and events.

Though several projects have been announced amid a mountain of hype, few have come to fruition yet.

Last year, a mile-long motorcade of construction trucks and heavy equipment made its way down Las Vegas Boulevard to the 50-acre site of Urban Village, a planned mixed-use project touted by developer Philippe Pageau Goyette as one of the hippest places to live for young professionals and empty-nesters looking to enjoy the Las Vegas lifestyle.

He handed out rose-colored sunglasses at the "ground-breaking" event so everyone could see the project in the same light, then sold the land to Centex Destination Properties, a resort-style residential division of Dallas-based Centex Homes.

Centex paid about $35 million for 13.5 acres with an option to buy the rest. The company is starting work on the first phase of 212 "brownstone" homes, four-story condos modeled after the type of homes found predominantly on the East Coast.

The mixed-use project would eventually have commercial businesses such as dry cleaners and postal services, restaurants and boutique retail, Centex spokesman C.J. Julin said. A condo-hotel is also planned.

Mark Doppe, former president of Carina Homes, had been approved for a 40-acre mixed-use development in the northwest valley that was to be called the Village of Centennial Springs. The project would have had 240 single-family homes, live-work lofts and brownstones.

"The big thing about this isn't so much the houses, it's the downtown mixed-use village, the new urbanist village," Doppe said when he announced the project in 2004.

"Everything is clustered around downtown and all the uses are right there. You can walk to shops, walk to day care, walk to your office and restaurants. The underlying feature is all these things play into each other, something like you'd find in Greenwich Village or even San Francisco."

Doppe sold his company to Miami-based Lennar Corp. last year and moved to Seattle. He kept 11 acres at Centennial Springs for a $42 million office and retail project.

The Curve was planned for 45 acres near the Las Vegas Beltway and Durango Drive in the southwest valley. Developers had to refund buyers' reservation deposits when they failed to meet a contractual deadline to begin construction.

The land is reportedly being offered for sale at $100 million.

Though some well-heralded mixed-use plans have failed, several developers continue to plan them. Glen, Smith & Glen, a Las Vegas-based developer, has started designing a 16-acre project in the southwest valley with 1,000 midrise residential units supported by offices and service retail.

Las Vegas-based Centra Properties formed a joint venture with KB Home to build Project Durango, a mix of urban residences and 750,000 square feet of commercial on 65 acres, also in the southwest.

Plise Cos. plans to introduce City Crossing, a 125-acre mixed-use project west of the Henderson Executive Airport, during the International Council of Shopping Centers conference this month.

The 5 million-square-foot project consists of 2,500 residential units, several high-rise office buildings and destination retail, all situated in a "true live-work-play master-planned community," Plise President of Development Chuck Coleman said.

Green of and his partner are marketing the 18-acre Equus Business Center on Desert Inn Road, just west of Interstate 15. It's zoned mixed-use overlay district-level one, which allows for midrise, high-rise and mixed-use development.

CB Richard Ellis' Green said he's seeing fewer transactions for mixed-use sites this year, but they're coming from more qualified buyers, especially for land that's already entitled.

Demand for investment-grade property in the valley remains robust, even though available sites continue to be difficult to find, Dworkin of Grubb & Ellis said.

Investors will have to use alternative acquisition strategies, purchasing "value-added" opportunities such as functionally obsolete properties for redevelopment with few or no tenants in place, he said.