It’s time for some tangible validation for patient and positive Las Vegans who’ve been following Downtown developments: The Urban Land Institute Nevada will honor Symphony Park as the 2025 Place of the Year at an awards ceremony next month at World Market Center.
It’s a significant recognition “of how thoughtful planning, world-class architecture and a commitment to create a transformative destination through visionary leadership can uplift an entire city,” according to a statement from ULI district council chair and former Henderson mayor Debra March.
Of course, that transformative destination has always been the goal, but recent months and years have brought more pieces together, significant residential and retail developments joining The Smith Center for the Performing Arts and the Cleveland Clinic Lou Ruvo Center for Brain Health. Symphony Park is quickly becoming a place to be, not just a place to go, and the excitement for the impending Las Vegas Museum of Art looks to be the icing on the culture cake.
“People often forget that Symphony Park was once a desolate Union Pacific railyard, an abandoned brownfield that sat empty for years,” says City Councilwoman Shondra Summers-Armstrong, whose Ward 5 includes the 61-acre Downtown district. “Today, it has transformed into a thriving hub for medical research, arts, culture and residential living.”
Developer Jackson-Shaw opened AC Hotel by Marriott and Element by Westin at Symphony Park last month on South Grand Central Parkway with five stories and 441 guest rooms. The dual hotel created more than 200 full- and part-time jobs.
And on the other side of Symphony Park’s actual park greenspace, more than 600 luxury rental units are now open at the Parc Haven and Auric projects, with ground-floor retail spaces ready and waiting. New construction by Southern Land Company is expected to add another 540 units and 20,000 square feet of retail. And Origin at Symphony Park will bring a 32-story condominium tower, multifamily housing and more than 90,000 square feet of retail, grocery and office space.
“We are very hopeful that a new grocery store will be a part of the Origin development, and we expect to have new dining opportunities, coffee shops and really everything you need to support all the residents who will be living there and folks visiting all the attractions in the area,” Summers-Armstrong says. “It is an incredible business opportunity when you think about being next door to The Smith Center and the Las Vegas Museum of Art.”
For Myron Martin, president and CEO of The Smith Center well before its opening in 2012, “it is great to see the pieces come together,” he says. “Having seen the 61 acres as dirt and having dreamed of it one day being fully developed … and now you look around and see what’s happening with the Cello Tower’s groundbreaking [part of Origin] right around the corner, and it’s going to be the place we dreamed of.”
The blending of residential and office space with the traffic generated by the Smith Center and the eventual $150 million art museum—expected to break ground in the next few years—is the difference maker. Those developments add daytime vibrancy and will hopefully attract diverse retailers. Symphony Park will soon feel like a real Vegas neighborhood, one very different from the rest of Downtown.
And yet it will be something special built for locals, much like its anchor, the Smith Center. “We like that distinction,” Martin says. “I remember having multiple conversations with consultants and officials about what it would be to the city, and we said then that all the various parts would be like musicians in a symphony, all important to creating the sound of what Symphony Park would be.”
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