Las Vegas Back From the Brink Revives Dead Projects: Real Estate

For almost five years, the desert plot at the western edge of the Las Vegas valley was home to hulking steel skeletons -- ghostly ruins of a construction project halted by the recession.

Now the 106-acre (43-hectare) site bustles with hundreds of workers building the first phase of Downtown Summerlin, an office, entertainment and retail complex that’s scheduled to open in October. Howard Hughes Corp. revived the development last year after the previous owner, General Growth Properties Inc., shut it down in 2008.