Developer and former casino exec team up on Las Vegas hotel project
A longtime local developer has teamed with a former casino executive who was part of the “Varsity Blues” college-admissions case to build a new hotel in Las Vegas.
Developer Bob Schulman and hotel industry veteran Gamal Abdelaziz — who goes by Gamal Aziz — bought 9.3 acres at the northeast corner of Charleston Boulevard and Grand Central Parkway for $16.35 million, according to property records and business-entity filings.
The sale, by Union Pacific Railroad, closed last month.
The Las Vegas Planning Commission gave the green light in April for a high-rise project on nearly 6 acres of the site. Plans call for an 18-story, 254-room hotel development with a commercial health club, restaurants, medical office space and other features, city records show.
Schulman, founder of Schulman Properties, has been a developer for 50-plus years, building apartment complexes, retail space and other projects in Southern Nevada and elsewhere.
Aziz, founder of Legacy Hospitality Group, is a former executive with casino giants MGM Resorts International and Wynn Resorts.
He also was one of dozens of people charged in 2019 over an alleged nationwide college-admissions scam, with authorities calling the investigation “Operation Varsity Blues.”
The case against Aziz was eventually overturned on appeal, and he has said he felt vindicated by the final outcome.
‘False scare tactics’
Aziz was accused of conspiring with William “Rick” Singer — the college-admissions consultant at the center of it all — and others to pay a $300,000 bribe to secure his daughter’s admission to the University of Southern California as a supposed basketball recruit, court records show.
Aziz was found guilty in 2021 of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and other charges. He was sentenced to a year in federal prison but allowed to remain free on appeal.
Ultimately, an appellate court overturned his conviction in 2023, and then prosecutors dismissed the charges against him, court records show.
Schulman and Aziz initially agreed to speak with the Las Vegas Review-Journal for this story but then declined.
Aziz wrote in an email that the case was fully resolved in his favor and is a closed chapter that is unrelated to the work he’s doing today.
Schulman wrote in an email that Aziz had the guts to render the government’s “false scare tactics inappropriate and wrong and to have justice served.”
He also wrote that Aziz has been at the forefront of the evolution of hospitality in Las Vegas and around the world, and that Aziz is “exceptionally well respected by everyone I have met or spoken to who knows him.”
Changing plans
Their vacant project site is just outside Las Vegas’ now-bustling Arts District and a mile-and-a-half or so from both the casino corridor downtown and the north edge of the Strip.
Schulman’s firm was listed as the project applicant in city records, and his plans changed substantially over the past year or so, as seen in city staff reports.
By spring 2024, Schulman sought to build a 275-unit apartment complex with a restaurant and a health club. By fall 2024, his plans called for a six-story, 254-room hotel and a six-story, 78,000-square-foot medical office building, as well as a restaurant and health club.
By this past spring, he sought to build a high-rise hotel instead.
Liz Olson of law firm Kaempfer Crowell, representing the developer, told the Planning Commission in April that her client had a new partner, so the project had changed a bit.
She said the plans called for a hotel-condo tower, as well as a seven-story parking garage on the site where the medical office building was slated to be built.
As seen in the deed that recorded the sale from Union Pacific, the buyers acknowledged the site borders property dedicated to railroad operations, which may create “noise, vibrations, emissions, fumes and odors” 24 hours a day.
The buyers also waived all rights to take legal action against the seller to reduce the effects of those operations, or to participate in petition drives, lobbying campaigns or other efforts seeking laws to lessen those impacts, the deed shows.
Union Pacific did not respond to a request for comment on the sale.
Contact Eli Segall at esegall@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0342.
