Houses to sprout at new 55-and-over Summerlin community

A new 55-and-over community in Summerlin is poised to sprout homes, after previous plans for the site crashed with the economy.

Shea Homes plans to start building model homes in one to two months at its 354-unit Trilogy community at the southwest corner of Flamingo Road and Town Center Drive.

The company will start taking deposits Saturday, said Hal Looney, Shea’s Arizona and Nevada area president.

The project resurrects a site that, like many others in town after the market tanked, was home for years to a partially built, abandoned development.

Home prices won’t be cheap in Trilogy, spanning from the mid-$400,000 range to maybe $1 million, Looney said. Moreover, the homes would all be attached, with such options as duplexes and condos.

Las Vegas’ housing market is dominated by single-family houses, and the median sales price for all new-home purchases in Clark County in May was around $343,400, according to Home Builders Research.

Amenities at the 53.5-acre Trilogy community are slated to include a culinary studio, a Zen garden and pickleball and bocce ball courts.

If all went according to plan, however, the site today would have more than twice as many homes as what Shea intends to build.

When the bubble burst

Westmark Homes set out last decade to build Montechiaro, an “age-qualified” community of three- and four-story buildings and a 35,000-square-foot clubhouse. Project plans called for 718 units, Clark County records show.

The developers bought the site in 2005 and secured nearly $80 million in project loans from a bank in 2006, court filings show. But when the bubble burst and the economy tanked, Montechiaro flopped.

According to court records, construction stopped by early 2008 and project lender AmTrust Bank foreclosed on the site that fall. AmTrust sued the developers in 2009, alleging it was owed nearly $5.5 million, but the bank was shut down by financial regulators several months later.

Westmark is no longer in business, Home Builders Research founder Dennis Smith said. Its former president, Mark Oiness, could not be reached for comment.

IHP Capital Partners in Newport Beach, Calif., bought the property for $22.5 million in 2015, county records show. Shea, based in Walnut, Calif., partnered with the firm in January.

Westmark constructed little more than three condo buildings and an unfinished clubhouse, and work crews demolished the structures last year.

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