Developers plot latest projects for Apex in North Las Vegas

After finishing once-abandoned projects in Las Vegas and amassing a big portfolio of office space, real estate investor Ofir Hagay has taken on a new venture: developing warehouses.

And for his first project, he picked an area of Southern Nevada that is gaining momentum after years of not seeing much: Apex Industrial Park.

Hagay, founder of Moonwater Capital, and Weston Adams, CEO of Western States Contracting, told me they teamed up to develop an industrial park in Apex that would consist of multiple buildings on roughly 300 acres.

They are doing infrastructure work and hope to break ground on the first building, which would span more than 900,000 square feet, in the fourth quarter this year, Hagay said.

Apex, off Interstate 15 at U.S. Highway 93 in North Las Vegas, offers thousands of acres for potential projects but remains mostly empty desert. The main reason, brokers and developers have said, has been a dearth of infrastructure in the remote business park.

But utility service has been expanding to Apex, and, amid a warehouse boom that has depleted the tally of potential project sites in the valley and pushed up land prices, Apex is seeing more construction plans.

Adams, who has extensive land holdings in Apex and is mining a mountain there for construction materials, previously teamed with the city of North Las Vegas on a water-pipeline project in the park.

Underscoring the need for basic utilities, when the city announced the 12-mile surface pipeline’s groundbreaking ceremony in summer 2018, its news release said: “Decades-old problem solved: Water coming to North Las Vegas’ Apex Industrial Park.”

Adams told the Review-Journal last month that power also has been installed in the area and that he has designs for other infrastructure, including sewer and gas.

“It finally feels like everyone’s moving in the same direction in Apex,” he said.

Hagay — whose past projects include partnering to buy, finish and sell The Gramercy, a once-abandoned mixed-use project in the southwest valley previously called ManhattanWest — said the venture with Adams marks his first industrial development.

Southern Nevada has seen a yearslong warehouse-construction boom that has ramped up since the pandemic hit, as the coronavirus outbreak sparked an accelerated shift to online shopping that has fueled more demand for distribution space.

“When you see what’s going on around us, everything today is driven by deliveries,” Hagay said.

He and Adams aren’t the only ones to venture to Apex lately.

Among them, VanTrust Real Estate acquired around 350 acres at the southern edge of Apex a year ago with plans to develop a 4.5 million-square-foot industrial park, and aluminum beverage can maker Ball Corp. unveiled plans last September for a new facility in Apex that, according to the city, would span more than 750,000 square feet.

Amy Ogden, an industrial-property broker with Logic Commercial Real Estate, said Friday that land prices have climbed in Apex but remain much lower than in the Las Vegas Motor Speedway area, a spot that’s been flooded with warehouse construction lately.

Lately, she hasn’t heard anyone rule out a project in Apex. As recently as two years ago, Ogden said, it was “never a consideration.”

Contact Eli Segall at esegall@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0342. Follow @eli_segall on Twitter.