Grammy winner partners on Las Vegas real estate project
A new office building is on the drawing board for the Las Vegas suburbs — and its backers include a Grammy winner who has bought several properties in America’s casino capital.
Las Vegas real estate investor Ofir Hagay has drawn up plans for an eight-floor, roughly 210,000-square-foot office building next to The Bend retail complex, along Sunset Road near the 215 Beltway in the southwest valley. Clark County commissioners already approved the project, and while records show that no building permits have been issued, Hagay recently said he aims to start construction early next year.
The development, Halo Tower, would include an adjacent parking garage and is slated to cost more than $130 million, said Hagay, founder of Moonwater Capital.
He noted that his partners on the class A, or higher-end, project include New York real estate broker Keith Kantrowitz and OneRepublic frontman Ryan Tedder, whose hits include “Apologize” and “Stop and Stare.”
Hagay also said the new project is named for a hit single that Tedder co-wrote: Beyoncé’s “Halo.”
Construction ‘stagnation’
Overall, developers have pumped the brakes on new office projects in Southern Nevada amid market and economic headwinds, including elevated vacancy rates and borrowing costs, limited pre-leasing, and uncertainty around tariffs, according to CBRE Group.
The brokerage firm reported that no office projects were finished or broke ground locally during the second quarter, continuing a stretch of “stagnation” that persisted last year.
Las Vegas has a smaller office sector compared with other big cities anyway, given that its major employers, hotel-casino operators, largely work from their resorts.
But more than five years after the pandemic sparked turmoil in office markets nationwide with widespread work-from-home arrangements, Southern Nevada’s share of empty offices is lower than other metro areas that have a bigger supply of white-collar workspace.
During the second quarter this year, Las Vegas’ direct office-vacancy rate was 12.2 percent, compared with 21.8 percent in Los Angeles County, 24.7 percent in the Denver area and 25.5 percent in Chicago’s central business district, according to CBRE Group.
‘Worked diligently’ on project
Hagay, an Israeli native who owns a big portfolio of office space in Southern Nevada, purchased the 4.2-acre Halo project site in 2022 for more than $6 million, property records show.
The Clark County Commission approved the project in June 2023 and then approved a two-year extension on the plans this past May.
Lexa Green of law firm Kaempfer Crowell, representing Hagay, told county officials in a letter that the developer had “worked diligently” on the project, including on electric and fiber conduits, and that water and sewer connection points had been established.
Hagay told the Las Vegas Review-Journal last month that he started doing deals with Kantrowitz and Tedder several years ago when his former company WGH Partners sold the duo an office building at Rainbow Boulevard and Post Road in the southwest valley.
Contacted by the Review-Journal, Kantrowitz confirmed that he and Tedder are partners in the Halo project, and confirmed the name’s origin.
Kantrowitz pointed to other real estate projects in that pocket of the valley, including the popular Durango hotel-casino and the newly built Ashley furniture store, as well as the leasing activity at UnCommons, a retail, office and apartment development nearby.
UnCommons’ four office buildings span around 350,000 square feet combined and were 93 percent leased, developer Jim Stuart said in March.
Music and real estate
Tedder’s publicist Sami Brensilber, of The Lede Company, confirmed that the musician is a partner in the Halo project and said that its name was chosen by one of his partners.
“Any association with the song is coincidental but he of course does not mind the name,” Brensilber wrote in an email.
Tedder acquired several commercial properties in Southern Nevada over the past several years, including office buildings and a Walgreens-occupied building across from Park MGM on the Strip.
His investors on the drugstore purchase included DJ duo The Chainsmokers, Tedder previously confirmed to the Review-Journal.
The singer-songwriter previously told the newspaper that he had bought property around the country and that his investment group is “very methodical.” They looked at population and income growth, the costs of developing versus buying a building, and other data that real estate investors typically analyze.
In the music business, Tedder said, people get a cut of every dollar he makes.
“With my real estate portfolio, nobody touches it,” he said.
Contact Eli Segall at esegall@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0342.
