NBA legend gets approval for $24M Las Vegas youth center

Basketball legend Shaquille O’Neal’s foundation got the green light to develop a new youth center in Las Vegas.

The Clark County Commission on Wednesday unanimously approved plans for a facility near the intersection of Lamb and Lake Mead boulevards that, according to county records, will eventually be called the Shaquille O’Neal Youth Development Complex.

Commission Chairman Tick Segerblom, whose district includes the project site, noted there are three elementary schools across the street from where the center would be built.

“This is a perfect location for this facility,” he said at the hearing.

Lisa Morris Hibbler, executive director of The Shaquille O’Neal Foundation, a Las Vegas-based nonprofit, said the complex will now span around 34,000 square feet and will include a gym, a mixed-martial arts and boxing center, pre-K services and other features.

She previously told the Las Vegas Review-Journal that the project will cost $24 million to develop. Her group aims to break ground in late March or early April and open the complex in fall 2026, she said.

It will be home to the Boys & Girls Clubs of Southern Nevada and an alumni center for student-support group Communities In Schools of Nevada, project manager Chase Wheeler told county officials in a letter in December.

Programming will focus on academics, leadership, career development, healthy lifestyles, sports and fitness, and recreation and creative arts, wrote Wheeler, of Las Vegas-based Carpenter Sellers Del Gatto Architects.

Last summer, Clark County commissioners approved donating the nearly 5-acre project site on Kell Lane, which had been owned by the county, to the foundation.

O’Neal, 52, launched the foundation in 2019. His group focuses on helping underserved youth and says its work is primarily targeted in Atlanta and Las Vegas.

The 7-foot-1-inch basketball Hall of Famer retired from the NBA in 2011 and has been a visible presence in America’s casino capital over the last several years.

In 2018, O’Neal and partners opened the Big Chicken sandwich shop just east of the Las Vegas Strip. In 2019, he teamed with Zappos for a “Shaq-to-School” charity event at the online shoe-seller’s downtown Las Vegas headquarters to give shoes and school supplies to families in need.

In 2021, then-Las Vegas Mayor Carolyn Goodman gave him a key to the city after O’Neal’s foundation teamed up to donate $200,000 to renovate basketball courts at Las Vegas’ Doolittle Complex.

Contact Eli Segall at esegall@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0342