Luxury apartments part of making Maryland Parkway ‘more attractive’ for UNLV students

Courtesy / Wild Dog Digital and CoStar

Exterior view of the yoU luxury apartments off Maryland Parkway across from UNLV.

When developer Frank Marretti acquired 2 acres across from the UNLV campus along Maryland Parkway in 2013, he wasn’t sure what the future would hold for the land.

“It was an old retail strip center, basically garbage,” Marretti said. “We ended up doing a high-risk project in an area where, for 30-plus years, nobody other than UNLV developed much of anything of substance.”

That has started to change, thanks in part to the mixed-use development that Marretti built on the site. Called The yoU, the nearly completed eight-story building has been constructed in two phases, starting with a parking garage now owned by UNLV. That part of the project also featured about 10,000 square feet of enclosed space the university now uses as its campus police headquarters.

The second phase included a campus-facing building with luxury residential and retail space.

The yoU Luxury Apartments

A studio is shown during a tour of The yoU luxury apartment complex across from UNLV, Thursday, Oct. 10, 2019. Launch slideshow »

Living spaces, situated on floors four through seven, feature a modern, high-ceiling design and views of the UNLV campus and the Las Vegas Strip to the west.

The building includes 125 living units, including studio apartments and a number of bedrooms in larger communal apartments. The private studios all feature washer and dryer units. But in a twist to standard residential developments in Las Vegas, there are no traditional multiple-bedroom apartments.

“Initially, this was a two-story design,” said Marretti, the founder of G2 Capital Development. “It just evolved as we went and part of that was working with the university. This isn’t something that’s part of the norm in Las Vegas because our city’s development is very horizontal. If you look from the airport all the way to downtown, there’s not many buildings over two or three stories.”

The yoU’s first residents moved in at the end of August. Marretti said close to half of the residents are UNLV students, a ratio he expects to stay mostly the same.

“Our target market is wide-ranging,” Marretti said. “It’s anything from the doctor who works at Sunrise (Hospital & Medical Center) and wants to have a place close by for late nights, to Strip workers, UNLV workers and, of course, UNLV students.”

The project was built through a public-private partnership with UNLV, an arrangement that seems to have worked out for the developer and the school.

“Traditionally, UNLV hasn’t owned much property on the east side of Maryland Parkway,” said David Frommer, executive director of planning and construction at the university. “It’s a concept that came up during some of our master planning, so we’ve been working with private developers to do some things. Where we have the need and resources, we’ve been looking to purchase properties or work with developers in a cooperative way.”

The university is leasing office space and common areas on the second and third floors of the building — UNLV calls it University Gateway — that it’s using for its graduate school and other arms of the university.

It’s a 20-year lease agreement, but Frommer said the university has an option to purchase those floors. He said that was likely to happen eventually.

“It’s a gorgeous building,” said Kate Korgan, dean of UNLV’s Graduate College. “We really want this to be a hub for graduate students, a place where they can have meetings and workshops and have a center for collaboration and innovation. It’s incredibly exciting.”

For the living units — which are all smart-home technology enabled — rents start at $895 per month and go up to just under $1,300. Parking spaces are not included.

While the space was deserted during a recent tour — largely because of the cool fall weather of late — it’s easy to see the building’s rooftop pool and hot tub lounge area as being popular among residents.

“These types of communal living spaces have been hugely popular in bigger cities like New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles,” Marretti said. “Less is more for the target market, but they still want to have a sense of a home. It’s different than what I grew up with, but this is what people like now.”

Tenants in the complex’s first-floor retail space are expected to be a Peet’s Coffee shop, a Roberto’s Taco Shop — along with other casual-food dining — and an America First Credit Union branch.

As of Thursday, one 3,000-square-foot retail space remained available for lease, Marretti said.

Marretti also has plans for another large mixed-use buildout on Maryland Parkway to the north of The yoU, which he said would likely break ground next year.

“We want to help make Maryland Parkway a more attractive place for our students, faculty, visitors and the community at large,” Frommer said. “We’re really excited about those opportunities. We hope that private developers might see development on Maryland Parkway a little differently with some of these projects, which have a great chance at success, being developed.”

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