Las Vegas Casino Magnate Rides Bet on Chunk of Symphony Park

Casino boss Derek Stevens gambled on buying part of a former railyard in downtown Las Vegas, and now holds the last cards for its redevelopment.

But Stevens, who owns three hotel-casinos downtown, won’t reveal his hand and what he wants to do with his 6.4 acres of dirt within the 61-acre region known as Symphony Park at Grand Central Parkway at Bonneville Avenue, the Las Vegas Journal-Review reported.

His lot, the last undeveloped chunk of Symphony Park, is separated by train tracks from the parking garage at his soaring Circa resort.

Mayor Shelley Berkley said in her recent State of the City address that a Stevens-built casino in Symphony Park is “in our future.” A city website proclaims, “Stay tuned for more details.”

But Stevens, who plays a long game, said not so fast. He wants to see other projects near the property he bought in 2017 take shape first.

“When you see all of these other projects coming to fruition … that’s going to help form, in my mind, what needs to go on to our property,” he told the Review-Journal late last month on the day before Berkley’s speech.

Either way, he’s got a high-stakes development opportunity.

The former railyard now dubbed Symphony Park (named, presumably, from discordant movements of clanging box cars and screeching locomotive brakes), had served as a Union Pacific Railroad fueling and maintenance yard for 70 years, beginning in the early 1900s.

In 2000, the city of Las Vegas bought the formerly polluted property to turn it into a mixed-use development.

Since then, Symphony Park has been largely built out, with cultural venues and upscale apartment complexes, with more projects under construction, according to the Review-Journal. It’s now home to The Smith Center for the Performing Arts, Discovery Children’s Museum and the Cleveland Clinic Lou Ruvo Center for Brain Health.

Dallas-based Jackson-Shaw has nearly completed a five-story hotel slated to open in September. Nashville-based Southern Land is building a 22-story residential tower and five-story apartment complex that could open this summer.

Locally based Red Ridge Development broke ground last month on a $450 million, 32-story condominium tower and five-story apartment building with offices and shops.

And the city is working on plans for a new Las Vegas Museum of Art in Symphony Park, Dina Babsky, director of economic and urban development for Las Vegas, told the newspaper.

She said officials are excited to have Stevens and his team “planning a new hotel-casino” on the north end of the park.

If anyone could build it, it would be Stevens. He owns the D Las Vegas and the Golden Gate casinos. In 2020 he opened Circa, downtown’s first new hotel-casino in four decades.

Six years earlier, he opened the Downtown Las Vegas Events Center after redeveloping a shuttered courthouse he’d picked up at auction for $10 million. The venue has hosted concerts, sports viewing parties and boxing matches, including a Don King-promoted fight on Showtime.

— Dana Bartholomew