Shelved Las Vegas projects are being revived

[CHICAGO] For almost five years, the desert plot at the western edge of the Las Vegas valley was home to hulking steel skeletons - ghostly ruins of a construction project halted by the recession.

Now, the 43 ha site bustles with hundreds of workers building the first phase of Downtown Summerlin, an office, entertainment and retail complex that is scheduled to open in October. Howard Hughes Corp revived the development last year after the previous owner, General Growth Properties Inc, shut it down in 2008.

The commercial real estate market in Las Vegas, littered with vacant buildings and abandoned construction sites by overreaching developers during the US property crash, is coming back to life as the local economy improves and tourists return to the nation's gambling capital. Blackstone Group LP's deal to buy the Cosmopolitan resort and Genting Bhd's proposed resurrection of an abandoned project on Las Vegas Boulevard are further signs of investor confidence in the nascent recovery.