A few months before mobster Bugsy Siegel opened the Flamingo, a real estate firm took out an ad offering a big spread on Las Vegas’ new, sparsely filled resort corridor.
Buyers could grab 140 acres a half-mile from the soon-to-open casino — for just $550 per acre.
Of course, property values on the Strip are infinitely higher now, even when the 1946 offering is adjusted for inflation, as it amounts to a paltry $7,141 per acre. But in the past year, after the pandemic turned Las Vegas Boulevard into a ghost town for a while and sank the tourism industry, the fallout from the outbreak has, for the most part, not been kind to the roadway’s real estate market.