Real Estate Insider

At the Rainbow Dunes Centre, shoppers used to stroll the aisles of Kmart, buy shoes at Payless and chow down at a Chinese buffet. In more recent years, the “customers” were kicking through walls, trashing the parking lot and ripping out copper.

The Alon casino project is stuck on the drawing board — its main backer bailed several months ago, and the land is up for sale.

During the recently concluded 2017 legislative session, state politicians again passed some housing-related measures that Gov. Brian Sandoval signed into law.

The Blackstone Group, a global investment giant, has gone from buying the recession’s discarded leftovers to snapping up hot property in Las Vegas.

It’s been set on fire and ripped apart by vandals. Its owners have been ordered to fix it or tear it down. There has even been a rumor of ghosts. And now, thanks to the Raiders, it’s looking like prime real estate.

Before anyone rented its apartments, or the office tenants moved in, or the eateries opened their doors, the Gramercy was known as ManhattanWest, and it was a scary place.

Amid the ongoing recovery from the bloodbath of the Great Recession, waves of retailers have been locking their doors in Las Vegas and elsewhere — and the pace of closures is only increasing.

And at first glance, anyone who’d driven past the abandoned, beat-up office complex on Durango Drive at Hacienda Avenue the past few years might lump this with the rest, figuring it was just another rundown project that flopped with the economy. But this mess had nothing to do with the recession.