Apartment owners near Las Vegas Strip sell to Caesars Entertainment

The owners of a rundown apartment complex in the shadow of the Strip have sold to a big casino operator.

But the sales price is probably a fraction of what the sellers could have fetched last decade, when investors paid jaw-dropping sums for property in or near the resort corridor. The landlord was described as a holdout to a buying binge.

Caesars Entertainment Corp. has bought a 1960s-era rental complex on Albert Avenue at Koval Lane, the French Villa apartments, for $10.95 million.

The sale, by the Nunez family of Santa Barbara, California, closed Jan. 27, Clark County records show.

The apartments are an island of sorts in a sea of Caesars-owned parking lots, just east of a string of Caesars-owned hotels on Las Vegas Boulevard, and it seems logical that the new owners would demolish the vacant complex for more parking.

A cluster of white two-story buildings, French Villa has boarded-up windows, graffiti, damaged stairs, yellow “caution” tape draped about, damaged air-conditioning units, and a headless palm tree near the shuttered rental office.

Caesars spokeswoman Adrienne Prather-Marcos said plans for the newly acquired property “have not been determined.”

The Nunez family could not be reached for comment.

Listing agent Don Marti of Wardley Real Estate said a “large portion” of the complex was empty “for a long period of time.” The remaining occupants moved out in the past month or so, before the sale closed, he said.

One building at French Villa is separated from the others by a Caesars-owned parking lot and appears in better shape than the rest of the complex. Marti said the remaining tenants lived “primarily” in that building.

Asked if Caesars was the only one to look at the property, Marti said he received inquiries but, given the location and surrounding ownership, it made the most sense for Caesars to buy it.

The apartments might be shabby-looking, but last decade, before the economy crashed, the landlord looked to build something bigger and flashier there — and Caesars’ predecessor was gobbling up property near him.

The late Oscar Nunez had plans in 2003 to build a 16-story tower with 269 condo units and about 41,000 square feet of retail and office space, county records show. The project never came out of the ground.

Meanwhile, in late 2006, the Las Vegas Sun reported that Harrah’s Entertainment had been on a “land-buying spree” in that area but was “tight-lipped about its redevelopment plans.”

“Nunez is a holdout,” the Sun reported. “And the question is: Will he eventually exact his price from Harrah’s or force it to build around him?”

One purchase Harrah’s made that year: It bought 11.5 acres of land at Harmon Avenue and Koval for $200 million, according to county records, a sum that would be all but impossible to get today.

Contact Eli Segall at esegall@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0342. Follow @eli_segall on Twitter.