Real Estate:

On the move: Credit One Bank buys land near Buffalo and Durango for new offices

A view of the Credit One Bank corporate offices at 585 Pilot Road, Tuesday, July 26, 2016. The company plans to build a new facility near the 215 Beltway and South Durango Drive.

A Las Vegas credit-card company that has catered to borrowers with lousy credit is planning to build new offices in the southwest valley.

Credit One Bank recently bought 24 acres of land just south of the 215 Beltway between Buffalo and Durango drives, Clark County records show. The company has obtained county approvals to develop two office buildings there.

It’s unclear when Credit One would break ground or whether it would vacate its headquarters near McCarran International Airport. But its project would be yet another commercial real estate development in southwest Las Vegas, perhaps the valley’s busiest spot for construction, and marks another big-money land purchase in that area.

Credit One says it’s one of the largest and fastest-growing credit-card issuers in the country, with 6 million card holders. The bank had 483 employees as of March 31 and booked nearly $23 million in first-quarter profit, up 24 percent from the same period last year, according to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., a banking regulator.

According to a 2007 federal report, Credit One’s “target market is subprime borrowers who desire to either build or repair credit.” Subprime borrowers have low credit scores, often because of past defaults or missed payments, and are charged higher interest rates to borrow money.

The company’s headquarters are on Pilot Road, just south of McCarran, and its lease expires in October 2017.

Credit One hasn’t given notice that it’s leaving, but the landlord is shopping the property around as a precaution, according to listing brokers Ryan Martin and Taber Thill of Colliers International.

Project plans call for two four-story office buildings at 150,000 square feet each, according to county records. They would be built in phases.

Credit One Bank

A view of Credit One Bank corporate offices at 585 Pilot Road Tuesday, July 26, 2016. The company plans to build a new facility near I-215 and South Durango Drive. Launch slideshow »

The Colliers brokers couldn’t confirm when Credit One would start construction.

“We’ve asked around but we can’t seem to find an answer,” Martin said.

Efforts to speak with Credit One were unsuccessful.

It isn’t the first proposed development for the site, and like dozens of other parcels in the valley, it was eyed for a high-rise project during the boom years that never got built.

In 2002, investors pursued plans for four three-story office buildings there, county records show. There were talks a few years later to build office and residential towers and retail space, but those ideas fizzled when the market crashed, said land investor and Colliers broker Scott Gragson, who sold the site to Credit One.

The land appears largely untouched, but some nearby properties are scarred remnants of the go-go years: Spanish View Tower and Sullivan Square.

Spanish View developer Rodney Yanke set out to build three 18-story condo towers last decade, but the project derailed after his funding reportedly dried up. The site is a block from Credit One’s and is a massive, fenced-off hole in the ground with a partially built parking garage, abandoned construction trailers and slabs of graffiti-covered concrete. It’s up for sale at $18.9 million.

Sullivan Square, a planned high-rise project by Las Vegas and Irish developers, was supposed to have 1,380 residential units, 45,000 square feet of retail and 272,000 square feet of office space, county records show, but lawsuits started flying and nothing got built.

Today, the abandoned property is a giant, fenced-off hole in the ground across from the new Ikea retail store.

Las Vegas’ once-battered construction industry has picked up speed the past few years, especially in the southwest. Builders there are putting up housing tracts, apartment complexes, retail centers, warehouses and offices.

Credit One's land purchase closed May 20. The company paid about $20.8 million for its site, property records show, or around $869,000 per acre.

By comparison, land investors paid an average of $113,431 per acre throughout Southern Nevada in the second quarter and an average of $463,428 per acre in the southwest valley, according to Colliers.

Ikea, which opened in May, also paid top-dollar for its site — $21.3 million, or about $819,000 per acre.

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