Las Vegas golf course, once owned by Billy Walters, may see new homes

A section homebuilder has acceptable retired to redevelop a Las Vegas play people erstwhile owned by gambler Bill Walters and immersed successful contention years ago.

Touchstone Living has drawn up plans to physique astir 1,300 homes connected 130 acres of Royal Links Golf Club, region documents show. The project, on Vegas Valley Drive astir a mile eastbound of Nellis Boulevard, would diagnostic two-story townhouses, pools, playgrounds, tennis and pickleball courts, and a way area.

The Clark County Planning Commission is scheduled to see the project Tuesday.

Touchstone’s sprawling lodging tract would pave implicit an east vale play course with a past marked by a multimillion-dollar connection during the mid-2000s bubble to let residential development, a rescinded City Council vote, a constabulary probe and allegations of metropolis favoritism.

It besides would bring lower-priced houses to a marketplace progressively dominated by much costly dwellings.

‘Once-in-a-lifetime’

Touchstone laminitis Tom McCormick said Monday that the caller community, Independence, would span astir 160 acres full and diagnostic 1,600 homes but that helium hasn’t filed plans yet for Royal Links’ 32-acre conception crossed Vegas Valley Drive.

McCormick said helium is nether declaration to bargain the people and expects to adjacent the acquisition earlier the twelvemonth ends. He aims to commencement gathering exemplary homes successful the precocious archetypal 4th oregon aboriginal 2nd 4th of 2022.

Independence would beryllium his biggest improvement ever, helium confirmed.

“It’s a once-in-a-lifetime project,” McCormick said.

Scottsdale Golf Group laminitis Shelby Futch, whose steadfast operates Royal Links, could not beryllium reached for remark Monday.

Home prices astatine Independence are expected to commencement astatine oregon beneath $250,000, according to McCormick, who noted the task is targeted astatine first-time buyers.

Royal Links is surrounded by plentifulness of housing. Its neighbors besides see an adjacent city-owned sewage attraction plant.

McCormick figured determination would beryllium “some magnitude of resistance” from prospective buyers to surviving adjacent the facility, but helium said the metropolis of Las Vegas has “done a large occupation remediating that,” and determination is “a batch of request for that extremity of town.”

According to a June 2020 missive from now-City Manager Jorge Cervantes, the metropolis spent astir $150 cardinal “to trim oregon destruct odors” from the wastewater attraction plant.

McCormick besides said that helium tried to bargain the play people earlier the Great Recession and that the spot “does person rather a communicative to it.”

‘Political and fiscal favoritism’

A legendary sports bettor and businessman, Walters purchased the then-vacant onshore from the metropolis of Las Vegas successful 1999 for $894,000. The merchantability came with a deed regularisation preventing thing but a play people connected the site, fixed its determination adjacent to a attraction works that successful 1993 unsocial sparked 1,400 odor complaints, metropolis records show.

Amid the frenzy of Las Vegas’ existent property bubble, Walters offered the metropolis $7.2 cardinal successful 2005 to assistance the deed regularisation to let residential development.

The City Council, nether then-Mayor Oscar Goodman, a person and erstwhile lawyer of Walters, approved lifting the regularisation successful autumn 2005. But the assembly rescinded the ballot 2 weeks later.

The reversal came aft Nevada’s then-attorney general, George Chanos, wrote a missive saying his bureau planned to analyse matters concerning the Royal Links site, including its merchantability and the process of lifting its deed restriction.

According to a metropolis memo astatine the time, erstwhile nationalist works main Richard Goecke violated bidding oregon spending protocols aggregate times betwixt 1996 and 1998 successful transportation with Walters’ acquisition of the property, the Review-Journal reported.

A Las Vegas constabulary probe determined Goecke “did perpetrate acts which were apt transgression successful nature,” but then-District Attorney David Roger determined transgression charges could not beryllium pursued due to the fact that the statute of limitations had expired, according to quality reports.

Chanos besides issued a study that alleged “a accordant signifier of governmental and fiscal favoritism granted to Mr. Walters’s concern entities by the metropolis of Las Vegas.”

Walters was not accused of wrongdoing, a quality study stated astatine the time.

Ultimately, Royal Links remained a play course, and Futch acquired the spot successful 2016, records indicate.

Walters, meanwhile, was arrested successful 2016 connected charges of insider trading. Convicted successful 2017 and sentenced to 5 years successful prison, helium was released from a national situation campy successful Florida past twelvemonth to service the remainder of his condemnation successful location confinement nether a coronavirus merchandise program, reports said.

In October 2020, the Clark County Commission approved plans by Royal Links’ ownership to rezone the people for residential use. At the hearing, a land-use advisor told commissioners that the plans showed “what a aboriginal builder could do” and were filed “for the intent of selling the property.”

On Jan. 20, his last time successful office, then-President Donald Trump pardoned Walters, 1 of 143 pardons and condemnation commutations, White House officials said astatine the time.

Contact Eli Segall astatine esegall@reviewjournal.com oregon 702-383-0342. Follow @eli_segall connected Twitter.