How much is a dilapidated Strip motel worth?

The owners of the White Sands Motel at 3889 Las Vegas Blvd. South are trying to sell the shuttered, decades-old property for $25 million on Saturday, August 13, 2016. .

The faded motel sign on Las Vegas Boulevard invites drivers to pull in, but a quick glance would easily persuade them to keep going. No slot machines, nightclubs, restaurants or even a bed with clean sheets over here.

The sign is for the boarded-up White Sands Motel, a forgotten slice of one of the most famous streets in America. And now, owners are trying to sell for a hefty price.

On the Strip across from the Luxor, White Sands is listed for $25 million, marketing materials show. The owners sought Clark County approval this year to repair the roof, “to address public safety concerns and sell the property,” according to county documents. Garbage is strewn about, the swimming pool is drained and weeds line the lot. In recent years, the 1.1-acre property’s “guests” included a feral cat colony and, apparently, homeless people.

White Sands Motel For Sale

The former entrance to the White Sands Motel at 3889 Las Vegas Blvd. South in which owners are trying to sell the shuttered, decades-old property for $25 million on Saturday, August 13, 2016. . Launch slideshow »

Land sales on the Strip are slow going, and the White Sands parcel isn’t ideal for development, brokers say. Yet its price tag is in line with the hyper-inflated bubble years of last decade, when land on the Strip sold for more than $30 million per acre — values that seem impossible today.

“They’re asking a ridiculously high price that they’ll never get,” broker Michael Parks, of CBRE Group’s global gaming group, said of the motel’s owners.

Parks said the White Sands, which sits behind barbed wire-topped fencing, had been listed on and off over the past decade. Given the asking price, a buyer might have to tear it down and develop a high-density project such as a casino-resort or a condo tower to make a profit.

But no one is building residential towers here, as condo prices have dropped and lenders are wary of backing new high-rises. Also, only a few new casinos are planned for the Strip, and two of them — Resorts World and Alon on the north Strip — seem to be showing little progress.

The shape of the White Sands property “adds to the complexity” of what could be developed there, Parks said. The rectangular site has little frontage along Las Vegas Boulevard and is surrounded on its other three sides by MGM Resorts International-owned festival grounds. Investors could “maybe” build retail space or try to “squeeze a hotel on there,” Parks said. As he sees it, MGM is the logical buyer but would not pay $25 million.

The Colleli family owns the motel, county records show. Requests for comment were not returned.

MGM spokeswoman Yvette Monet said the casino operator “is not considering” buying the property.

Josh Smith, vice president of brokerage firm Sun Commercial Real Estate’s hospitality division, said he liked the motel’s location; it has a “coveted” Las Vegas Boulevard address. But he said a developer would need to assemble nearby parcels to build a big project. “You definitely couldn’t put a megaresort on it today,” he said.

Smith said the motel was priced “aggressively” and that investors have a “stronger” ability to develop a nearby property that’s also for sale, because it’s bigger: a 38.5-acre site that includes the abandoned, partially built SkyVue observation-wheel project. Brokers have said that owner Howard Bulloch wants more than $10 million per acre, or more than $385 million, for those holdings.

The one-story, 11,600-square-foot White Sands was built in 1959. The Colleli family is said to have closed it around 1999 and to have once rejected an offer to sell it for “a ton of money.” The Review-Journal reported in 2012 that a feral cat colony had formed there, and a county building official last year deemed the motel “dangerous.”

An inspection found that the roof was damaged, electrical and plumbing services had been vandalized, and the building had not been secured, “which allowed vagrants to occupy the structure,” a May 2015 county notice said.

Ron Lynn, then-director of building and fire prevention for the county, wrote last fall that there had been cleanup work and “there was no evidence of the feral cat issue.”

The owners, meanwhile, don’t expect the decades-old motel to live on. According to county documents, they figured that potential buyers would demolish it and build something new.

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