Developer Sam Cherry said seeing buildings in other cities from which residents could walk to amenities inspired him to build SoHo Lofts and Newport Lofts.

From his 11th-floor luxury condominium at Las Vegas Boulevard and Hoover Avenue, SoHo Lofts developer Sam Cherry looks over downtown Las Vegas and sees the first village coming to the city, a happening place like Greenwich Village in New York City.

Newport Lofts, another Cherry development, is rising to the sky two blocks west of SoHo and construction cranes are hovering over Juhl and Streamline, mixed-use residential projects.

The concentration of high-rise condos, with restaurants and shops on the ground floor, is poised to add a new dimension to downtown. Each building will have its own character.

Cherry, a 28-year-old who dropped out of Green Valley High School after his sophomore year, saw it coming. He got a jump on the market when he convinced his father-in-law, Chicago developer Harris Rittoff, to buy a 30,000-square-foot parcel for $1.2 million in January 2004 and announced plans for his 16-story, 120-unit SoHo Lofts.

"Now that you see SoHo finished and Newport and Juhl and Streamline coming out of the ground, you know it's happening," Cherry said. "It's a great feeling to drive down Fourth Street and see someone from SoHo walking (his) dog. You're here every day watching it go up and now people are living here."

Completion of the $63 million project was originally scheduled for late 2005. Prices started in the high $300,000s, but have doubled in the last couple of years, much of it due to "ridiculous" construction costs, Cherry said. The units feature granite countertops in the kitchen, designer sinks and fixtures, Italian cabinetry and 11-foot ceilings.

Question: Why did you select downtown Las Vegas for your high-rise condo?

Answer: The mayor was promoting it. I really had an understanding of urban living, having traveled to San Diego, Chicago, New York, parts of Miami. What's going on downtown that everyone's talking about? I go driving down Fourth Street and (think) 'Wow, this is amazing.' Everything lines up perfectly. I get to (South) Fourth (Street) and (East) Charleston (Boulevard) and there's everything but residential. And the timing was right. There wasn't the high-rise craze and the interest rate was good. It was amazing to me that a city of this size didn't have what other major cities have, a building where you could go down and walk to amenities.

Question: How many buyers at SoHo are from Las Vegas? Where are the others from?

Answer: Seventy percent, I'd say, of our 114 units (sold) are from Las Vegas. We have some from New York. One person from Chicago called his Realtor and said, "I want to be in downtown Las Vegas." He found the right person to get in touch with and he's now renting.

Question: How do you market luxury condos to local residents who are already complaining about new home median prices of $320,000?

Answer: There's a tremendous amount of people we found who came from other cities, say Chicago, who lived in high-rises. Now they're in Henderson and Green Valley and have to drive back into the city. It really is a certain lifestyle. You don't have a yard. You walk in the front door and start living.

Question: Like Turnberry, most of the units at SoHo are dark at night. What percentage of residents are full time?

Answer: We've got about 40 full-time people living in the building. I never turn on a light here. There's so much light coming from the Strip and the city. You can see I haven't put up blinds here. A lot of people put up black-out shades and it looks dark, but I know there's people in there because I just talked to them. There's going to be more (primary residents) when it gets to the end user. That's how it starts. Investors come in first.

Question: How were you able to convince your father-in-law to back this project?

Answer: There was no convincing. One day I said, "Harris, you have to come and see this piece of property." He's been coming here since 1945. I bring him down Las Vegas Boulevard and loop around to Fourth Street and slowed down by the property and the only thing he said was "buy it" because he's seen it happen in other markets. He saw it in Chicago. When things make sense, they make sense. Literally the next day we put it in escrow.

Question: How much financing did you need and where did you get it?

Answer: We got $56 million from (Chicago-based) Corus Bank.

Question: Why haven't other downtown high-rise projects such as Club Renaissance and Sandhurst made it out of the ground? They were announced about the same time as SoHo, so it can't all be blamed on rising construction costs.

Answer: One part of the equation is construction and there's many more. You name stuff in downtown. It isn't downtown because properties are failing in the middle of the most valuable real estate in the world and on the south Strip. You've got to look at it as a whole, not just downtown. As a whole, the big percentage that failed were not downtown. What's happened is that a lot of people that were extremely successful in other markets which do have more general contractors and labor savvy, they didn't have the same relationships here they had in other cities.

We had all of that and capital. You've got to have that to get a project off the ground. Everything else is pure risk. You'll always be able to sell the land. For example, our general contractor, Jack Breslin, we've been with them (Breslin Builders) for 14 years. If he wasn't part of it and didn't believe in it, we wouldn't be anywhere. He's a major reason why SoHo and Newport are out of the ground and why StanHi will come out. Not all of those developers had the same relationship with their general contractor. Maybe some were undercapitalized.

Question: You said you've been mentored by an "amazing" person, your father-in-law. How have you established yourself?

Answer: First of all, I'm surrounded by the most amazing people, partners I went to high school with. Each one does something different. Jonathan Jorgensen is CEO, Ryan Stibor is my counsel, Grant Garcia handles sales and marketing. Everyone plays a role and plays it extremely well. I have a wonderful team. Because of them, we were able to get this project off the ground.

Question: What advice would you give other high-rise developers?

Answer: I think they need to keep an open mind and talk to everyone in the industry. This is a market where you have to do tremendous market research because it's different than any market in the country. There's something announced every day, billions of dollars of investment within a short distance of each other.