Elon Musk's Boring Co. Buys Site For Vegas Loop Expansion
Elon Musk’s The Boring Co. spent $3.6M on a 1.4-acre site in Las Vegas that it expects to turn into a station for the proposed expansion of its Vegas Loop underground transportation system.
Object Dash LLC, an affiliate of The Boring Co., bought the site at 3682 South Valley View Blvd. from California-based developer and investor HMV Group. Boring received approvals for an expansion of the Vegas Loop earlier this year, according to a release from HMV. The approvals include two new stations in the Chinatown/Asian District, including the Valley View location.
The other site, at 3529 Spring Mountain Road, is also owned by HMV Group. The company has assembled about 23 acres near the future stations and is working on two mixed-use projects, measuring 96K SF and 98K SF, that are expected to deliver in early 2025.
“We continue to make progress on our retail and mixed-use developments in Las Vegas’ booming Chinatown/Asian District that are directly adjacent to the site that we sold to The Boring Company,” HMV Director Maxwell Nuremberg said in the release. “It made perfect sense to collaborate with them, since the Vegas Loop station will eventually bring customers and residents to the doorstep of our Spring Mountain Vegas Loop retail development and Valley View Vegas Loop retail development projects.”
The Valley View site Boring purchased is zoned for manufacturing use and has two buildings on it totaling nearly 7K SF.
The existing section of the Vegas Loop serves the city’s convention center and opened in 2021. It uses Tesla vehicles to transport people along 2.2 miles of tunnel and has five stations, four of which are surface-level.
The Las Vegas City Council unanimously approved a plan to expand the system to include 68 miles of tunnels and 81 stations, 21 of which would be in Las Vegas city limits.
During the July council meeting at which approval was granted, Las Vegas Mayor Carolyn Goodman voiced a number of concerns in spite of her vote in favor of the expansion, according to 3News in Las Vegas.
“I think it's impractical. It is not proven yet. We don't have any raw, real data that's confirmed,” Goodman said, according to the news station. “I find it unsafe and inaccessible. It is operator-driven, therefore, it's not on a rail and cannot move us all safely.”
She also criticized the fact that Teslas hold only a few passengers at a time, and that a seemingly minor problem like a flat tire has the capability to back up the tunnel and obstruct traffic. The mayor faced pressure from hotels and others in the business community, however, and ultimately supported the expansion.
Among the country’s most popular tourism destinations and a magnet for conventions that draw millions to the city every year, in addition to the vast workforces that staff the city’s behemoth hotels, Vegas is a crowded place. Its traffic patterns reflect this, with an estimated 41 hours of lost time per driver per year, according to Inrix’s 2022 Global Traffic Scorecard.
The Boring Co. has proposed drilling tunnels under other American cities, including Miami, Chicago and Los Angeles, but those deals haven't come to fruition.
