The Culinary union’s newest healthcare facility is opening in Las Vegas, marking the last in a chain of clinics around the valley.
Culinary leaders, joined by politicians and others, held a ribbon-cutting ceremony Thursday for the newly built Culinary Health Center at the southwest corner of Tropicana Avenue and Cameron Street, near The Orleans.
The two-story, 98,900-square-foot facility offers primary care, mental-health counseling, dental care, radiology, physical therapy, and a pharmacy.
It is scheduled to start seeing patients on Friday.
The politically powerful Culinary union represents workers at most hotel-casinos on the Strip and downtown. Its members include housekeepers, food and cocktail servers, porters, bellmen, cooks, bartenders and laundry workers.
The union’s pension fund, called the Western Unite Here and Employers Pension Fund, owns the new healthcare property. The Culinary Health Fund, which provides medical benefits and services to union members, is the tenant.
All told, this marks the fourth and final Culinary Health Center in the Las Vegas Valley, the union said.
‘Convenience factor’
The new facility sits on a nearly 10-acre plot about 2 miles west of the Strip. It’s open to members of Culinary Local 226; Bartenders Local 165; IATSE Local 720, which represents stagehands and other entertainment technicians; American Federation of Musicians Local 369; and the families of all those union members.
It is not open to the general public.
According to a news release, the facility is expected to get around 100,000 patient visits annually.
Jesus Vidueira, president of the Culinary Health Fund, said in an interview Thursday that the idea behind the clinics was to open them where most of the union members live.
Nearly 32,000 Culinary members live near the newest location, according to the union, though it’s also close to where they work.
“There’s a convenience factor here,” Vidueira said.
He also noted that members and their dependents will receive care at the center with no out-of-pocket costs, adding that it’s all covered by insurance funded by their employers, as negotiated through collective bargaining agreements.
Ted Pappageorge, secretary-treasurer of Culinary 226, previously said in an interview that the health fund pays about $750 million in claims per year.
High-rise plans
A very different sort of real estate project was once penciled for the site on Tropicana.
During the mid-2000s bubble, a group of developers unveiled plans for a two-tower hotel-condo complex with more than 1,000 units, a hibiscus-shaped pool, spa and salon, and retail outlets.
The project, Pinnacle Las Vegas, even called for three levels of sky-bridge suites built between the towers, “defying not only convention but the very law of gravity,” marketing materials boasted.
However, like so many other proposed high-rises from that era, the venture died on the drawing board and was never built.
The land traded hands a few times, and then in 2018, property records indicate that the Culinary union’s pension fund acquired the site for $11.5 million, the Las Vegas Review-Journal previously reported.
In early 2024, Clark County commissioners approved plans for the now-finished medical complex.
Contact Eli Segall at esegall@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0342.
