By Eli Segall Las Vegas Review-Journal November 12, 2021
A pair of Las Vegas developers have resumed construction of an office project that they tabled after the pandemic hit.
Crews are digging trenches, building rebar cages and doing other work for Narrative, located just south of the 215 Beltway between Durango and Buffalo drives in the southwest valley, G2 Capital Development founder Frank Marretti told the Review-Journal.
The four-story building’s “vertical tilt” is expected around late February or early March, and the first tenants are slated to move to the roughly $40 million project in December 2022, said Marretti, who is developing it with LaPour Partners founder Jeff LaPour.
Construction resumed about two weeks ago after being stopped for around 16 to 17 months, according to Marretti.
Employers closed offices around the world last year over fears of the coronavirus outbreak, sparking discussions about how much space firms really needed as staffers worked from their couch, kitchen table or in-home office.
Many people are still working from home, though developers are pushing ahead with new office projects in Las Vegas, especially in the southwest valley, and employers have been leasing space.
LaPour said this week that he wasn’t concerned that office work would “never come back; I was more focused on the ‘when.’”
He said demand for space is strong and noted that Narrative, slated to measure just over 100,000 square feet, has already landed two tenants that will lease roughly half of the complex.
Commercial real estate brokerage Colliers International is taking 14,000 square feet, and software firm Agilysys, which serves the hospitality industry, leased 37,000 square feet, LaPour said.
Colliers’ move to Narrative was announced in summer 2019. Efforts to get comments from Agilysys were unsuccessful Thursday.
LaPour and Marretti unveiled plans for Narrative in mid-2019 and announced in February 2020 that they broke ground on the project, which is next to credit-card issuer Credit One Bank’s headquarters.
The next month, Las Vegas rapidly shut down over fears of the coronavirus outbreak.
Narrative wasn’t the only real estate project in Southern Nevada to go quiet or otherwise get delayed after the pandemic unleashed chaos and devastated the economy.
Today, its developers aren’t the only ones gambling that employers will want their workers in offices, too.
Matter Real Estate Group is developing UnCommons, a 40-acre mixed-use project near Narrative that is slated to feature more than 500,000 square feet of office space.
Also in the southwest, Sansone Companies is developing a glass-and-steel office complex called Axiom, and developer Joe Sorge is building Evora, a 42-acre mixed-use venture that calls for 240,000 square feet of office and other commercial space.
Summerlin developer Howard Hughes Corp. also is constructing a 10-story office building next to Las Vegas Ballpark.
Overall, the valley has seen more than 1.5 million square feet in office leasing activity this year through September, brokerage CBRE Group reported.
Contact Eli Segall at [email protected] or 702-383-0342. Follow @eli_segall Twitter.