Stretching between the Strip and downtown, Las Vegas Boulevard is lined with wedding chapels, eateries, tattoo shops, strip clubs, and more than a few vacant lots and boarded-up buildings.
Now, a redevelopment project is nearing completion and, if all goes to plan, will bring a burst of food-and-beverage outlets and live music to the area.
Developer Kamran Foulad said in a recent interview that he has almost finished his project near the southeast corner of Las Vegas and Oakey boulevards. He aims to fill the place with 11 or 12 tenants, and he put the construction costs above $8 million.
Built on a nearly 1-acre lot that was previously home to a boarded-up tire shop, the complex has rooftop decks and a multicolored design, and, according to Las Vegas city records, was designed to span around 36,700 square feet. It consists of a leftover portion of the auto shop and new construction.
City records and marketing materials show the project is called the Brewhaus, though Foulad now calls it the Campus.
Foulad, owner of real estate vehicle Proview Series, envisions having at least one brewery, a tequila bar, and other food-and-beverage spots, along with indoor and outdoor seating and live music — a complete overhaul of what used to be there.
“That is really what turns me on: get the worst property and make the best out of it,” he said.
He even bought a huge wine barrel from California and had it converted into a bar, complete with a rear hatch, so a server can get in and out, and a set of small, twin doors that swing open so the bartender can hand out drinks, with a built-in counter as well.
He spent around $15,000 to purchase, convert and ship the barrel, which, he estimated, was able to hold probably 750 to 850 gallons of wine.
Transforming a rundown property
All told, the complex could bring new life to a pocket of Las Vegas that has dealt with blight and homelessness on and near a roadway best known for its towering, glitzy hotel-casinos down the street.
When Foulad and his son, developer Adam Foulad, appeared before the Las Vegas City Council in 2024 about the project, the younger Foulad said the area was “a little bit dead.”
“There’s more people doing drugs in the alley around there than there are actual patrons,” Adam Foulad told the council.
The Foulads own numerous properties in the Fremont Street area of downtown Las Vegas and in the Arts District area. In 2022, Kamran Foulad bought the former tire-shop site at 1701 Las Vegas Blvd. South for $2.75 million, property records show.
He recalled that the building was boarded-up and dilapidated and that homeless people were camping in an adjacent alley.
A few months after his purchase, he told city officials in a letter that he planned to increase the building footprint and bring in breweries and restaurants, city records show.
He also wrote that he would not have on-site parking for the project and indicated that customers could use a 65-space parking lot he owns at the corner of Oakey and Main Street, about a block away, across Las Vegas Boulevard.
Foulad sought a variance to allow zero parking spaces at the proposed complex and submitted plans to convert the auto shop into a two-story commercial shell.
No on-site parking
City staff recommended denying the plans, writing in a report that while the envisioned project “would be an improvement from the existing blighted and vacant building,” bringing in such uses as restaurants and breweries with zero on-site parking “would have a detrimental impact on the surrounding residential neighborhoods.”
According to the staff report, 143 parking spaces were required for the project.
Still, the Las Vegas Planning Commission approved the developer’s proposal in 2023.
The Foulads later came back for approval to add a small stand-alone building with a rooftop deck to the site. The parking issue came up at a City Council meeting in 2024, though City Manager Mike Janssen outlined existing and then-upcoming parking spaces in the area.
He said that the nearby parking lot owned by the Foulads is operated by the city, indicated it gets little use, and stated a project like theirs would likely bring traffic to that site.
Janssen also said the city was planning to build a roughly 500-space garage a few blocks away and was adding street parking in the area, as well.
Councilwoman Olivia Diaz, whose ward includes Foulad’s project site, said at the meeting that this stretch of Las Vegas Boulevard needs some “major” investment and revitalization and that the new project would be a “shot in the arm” for the area.
She also had no qualms about the lack of on-site parking, citing the available and incoming spaces in the area, and said her neighbors were eager for the developers to get started.
“Vacant properties breed a lot of problems for not just the property owner but the adjacent neighborhoods,” she said, adding that redeveloping the site would yield “so many amazing results.”
The City Council approved the revised plans.
‘If it is the easy choice, it’s already too late’
Adam Foulad, owner of KLA Capital, recently said that he and his father are contemplating taking over operations of their nearby parking lot and offering back-and-forth rides for customers of the new complex, along with parking validation.
The complex will also have three spots for ride-hailing services, he confirmed.
Adam Foulad said that he and his dad don’t buy real estate in “easy” parts of town, saying their goal is to take properties and make them the attraction.
Las Vegas’ Arts District, for instance, used to be a sleepy place, with furniture stores, second-hand clothing shops and other tenants but also vacant storefronts, empty lots and thin foot traffic.
But in recent years, a surge of new eateries, coffee shops and retailers opened in the area, drawing more people there to eat, drink and shop. Amid the increased popularity, landlords also have charged higher rents, and developers started building some upscale apartment complexes in the area.
KLA Capital’s portfolio includes renovated Arts District buildings that are home to such food-and-beverage spots as Cornish Pasty Co., which makes chicken pot pie, sticky toffee pudding and other dishes in a former fabric store; SoulBelly BBQ and Nevada Brew Works, which, between the two, serve brisket, pulled pork, brick-oven pizza, burgers, and beer in a former auto-repair shop; and Tacotarian, which cooks up plant-based tacos in a former laundromat.
Property records show that Kamran Foulad purchased these buildings before they were overhauled and the current tenants moved in.
As his son put it, “there wasn’t a lot going on” in the Arts District a decade or so ago.
“We don’t go to areas that are the easy choice because if it is the easy choice, it’s already too late,” he said.
Contact Eli Segall at esegall@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0342.
