Market Share, the blog of the Commercial Real Estate Development Association, summarized an Inside CRE podcast episode with Steve Neiger, managing principal at CAST and 2026 president of CREDA Southern Nevada. The post, by CREDA marketing director Brielle Scott, used The Cliff at Green Valley Ranch, which it called a $55 million office-to-retail conversion of an aging suburban office campus, as a case study for developers weighing what to do with obsolete office buildings.
Neiger said reusing an existing building brings different problems than ground-up work. "Adaptive reuse can feel like opening Pandora's box," he said, adding that making it pencil comes down to time and cost. For The Cliff, his team first tested whether the trade area could support a premium lifestyle destination, then worked backward from achievable rents and projected net operating income to set the budget. They also held out for tenants that fit the long-term vision rather than taking the first offers. "We are calling it 'Henderson's new center of gravity,'" he said.
The longest section dealt with approvals. Neiger said The Cliff should have taken 12 to 18 months to reach construction but took nearly three years because of entitlement and permitting delays, and that municipalities underestimate how eroding returns discourages these projects. He pointed to Maricopa County, Arizona, which cut dozens of pages from its development code, as a model for other jurisdictions.