Developers buy original apartment buildings at The Gramercy for $48M

More than a dozen years ago, developers Eric Cohen and Doug Eisner came close to buying a failed real estate project from Las Vegas’ bubble days: ManhattanWest.

Another group ultimately bought the complex, renamed it, finished construction and sold it off in pieces. But now, Cohen and Eisner have come back and picked up a portion of the southwest valley property.

Their firm, The Calida Group, recently purchased the original two apartment buildings at The Gramercy, as the complex on Russell Road just west of the 215 Beltway has long been known.

The $48.45 million sale by Lyon Living closed in April, property records show.

“This is the girl that got away, and we always wanted her back,” said Eisner, co-founder of Calida.

The purchase marks a full-circle moment for Calida, which paid above last year’s market average for apartments in a mixed-use complex that was once a visible casualty of Las Vegas’ brutal real estate crash.

Lyon recently sold a separate apartment building that it developed at The Gramercy, also at a premium value.

And both deals come as housing landlords increasingly offer concessions to land tenants in Southern Nevada, including at The Gramercy.

‘We finally got there’

Las Vegas-based Calida, launched by Cohen and Eisner, is one of the biggest apartment developers in Southern Nevada.

At The Gramercy, it acquired two four-story buildings with 160 units total, along with underground parking, a rare amenity in town.

Residents also are a short walk from the commercial tenants in The Gramercy, including Pinches Tacos, Hedary’s Mediterranean restaurant and Bikini Fitness.

All told, Calida paid around $302,800 per unit for the apartment buildings now called Ely at The Gramercy.

Last year, throughout Southern Nevada, the highest average sales price per unit for any quarter was around $246,300, according to brokerage firm Colliers.

Eisner said that the buildings have big apartments, wide hallways and high ceilings — and that his team estimated it would cost more than $500,000 per unit to construct the same buildings today.

A spokesperson for Lyon said in a statement that the firm “regularly evaluates its portfolio based on long-term business objectives, market conditions, and opportunities to redeploy capital,” and that its recent sales at The Gramercy were “part of that ongoing portfolio management strategy.”

Across the Las Vegas Valley, landlords have been offering months of free rent or other perks to sign tenants following a surge in apartment construction in recent years.

Among the properties with concessions, Ely at The Gramercy is offering eight weeks free rent to would-be tenants, while the other apartment building at The Gramercy — The Ellison — is offering the same, as seen on their websites.

Eisner noted that his group just closed its purchase and said the buildings were 84 percent occupied at the time of sale. He also noted that Calida is trying to land more tenants amid increased competition for renters in the southwest valley.

Plus, he confirmed that Calida was under contract years ago with the former WGH Partners to buy the then-unfinished ManhattanWest.

“We’re very happy we finally got there,” he said.

‘Nobody wanted to touch it’

Calida and WGH were in the process of buying the entire spread for $20 million. But as Eisner described it, the firms had different visions for what they wanted to do with the site and parted ways.

WGH ultimately teamed with The Krausz Companies to buy the site for $20 million in 2013.

Las Vegas real estate investor Ofir Hagay, a former partner with WGH, confirmed that Calida had teamed with his old group to buy the once-blighted complex, saying Cohen and Eisner “were believers from the get-go.”

Hagay, founder of Moonwater Capital, also agreed that the stalled project looked like a scary place.

“Nobody wanted to touch it,” he said.

ManhattanWest developer Alex Edelstein set out to build condos, restaurants, offices and a hotel, all spread among 20 acres. He broke ground in spring 2007, but the economy soon cratered, and Edelstein stopped construction by late 2008.

All told, ManhattanWest was one of many unfinished projects to litter Southern Nevada after the frenzied real estate market flamed out.

Its unfinished buildings sat behind barbed wire-topped fencing, with its nine-story condo tower only partially covered by blue glass panels, letting passersby see through its exposed floors.

New direction

Edelstein sold the complex to Krausz and WGH after spending a reported $170 million on it. The new owners changed the name, completed the apartment buildings and office-and-retail buildings, and imploded the condo tower.

They eventually sold The Gramercy in chunks for more than $100 million combined, with Lyon Living buying the apartment buildings, vacant land and parking lots for around $46 million in 2018.

In 2021, Lyon and the LandSpire Group broke ground on a new apartment building on the former condo tower’s footprint and some adjacent acreage.

The developers opened the 294-unit upscale complex, The Ellison, in 2024, and sold it in April for $103 million to real estate investment firm The Bascom Group.

That sales price amounted to more than $350,000 per unit.

Bascom vice president Tom Gilfillan said in an email that the building’s occupancy rate was 74 percent at the time of sale.

He also said in a news release that opportunities like The Ellison “do not come around often,” adding it was a new, institutional-quality property acquired at a value that was “significantly below” what it would cost to build today.

“We are excited to get to work,” he said.