Las Vegas developer Sam Cherry has built condo towers and apartment buildings in the downtown area, but his latest housing project is a bit different.
Cherry said Thursday that he acquired the shuttered former Bent Inn, at the northeast corner of Ogden Avenue and 11th Street, for $3.2 million and that he plans to spend just over $1 million turning the 33-room hotel property into a residential complex.
The guest rooms will be converted into studio apartments, and the property also features 2,400 square feet of retail space that will be turned into a new hospitality concept, according to a news release from the buyer’s namesake real estate firm.
Cherry said that he plans to open the apartment building in 90 days, noting the site underwent extensive upgrades not long ago.
Plus, the short-lived hotel site, which marketed itself to LGBTQ travelers, is next to an apartment complex that Cherry developed.
All told, the purchase is a new chapter for a now-former hotel property that was said to be a first for the city but ultimately shut down and then went into foreclosure.
It also marks another bet by Cherry on downtown Las Vegas and its housing market.
‘A more livable and wonderful place’
Cherry, chief executive of Cherry Development, unveiled his latest plans Thursday evening during a gathering with friends, family and other guests in a 15th-floor unit he still owns in Soho Lofts, a condo tower he developed two decades ago during Las Vegas’ frenzied real estate bubble.
At the event, which celebrated the 25th anniversary of his company’s founding, Las Vegas Mayor Shelley Berkley told attendees that Cherry has been at the forefront as officials reimagine the city.
She also presented the 48-year-old developer with a Key to the City, saying he’s making Las Vegas “a more livable and wonderful place to live.”
Cherry said in an interview that the new purchase provides connectivity to his Share Downtown-branded complex next door, and he pointed to other possible developments in the area.
He noted city officials started looking for a developer for roughly 11 acres of city-owned real estate downtown, and he figures more sites once owned by the late Tony Hsieh will go on the market.
The former Zappos chief, who died in 2020 at age 46, was one of downtown’s biggest property owners and left behind a vast real estate portfolio that included numerous vacant lots and boarded-up motels that have since been demolished.
‘Some things just aren’t meant to be’
The Bent Inn, 1108 E. Ogden Ave., opened in fall 2023 and was Las Vegas’ only gay-owned boutique hotel. However, it abruptly closed less than a year later, with the owners citing an ongoing legal dispute with the general contractor, the Review-Journal previously reported.
The hotel reopened last year, but then in fall 2025, management announced the Bent Inn’s “final closure.”
“Well, we tried,” management wrote in a social-media post, adding that “some things just aren’t meant to be” and that “this marks the end of a cherished but too brief chapter.”
Clark County property records show that lenders foreclosed on the site in May.
Cherry said that he bought the site from the lenders, that the transaction closed Thursday, and that his group planned to start cleaning the site Friday morning.
The sale had not appeared in Clark County property sales records online by mid-day Friday, though Cherry indicated the paperwork processing may have been delayed amid widespread email outages.
Cherry’s other projects in the downtown area include condo tower Newport Lofts, another product of the mid-2000s easy-money-fueled real estate bubble. More recently, his group opened the 63-unit Share Downtown apartment building in 2020; the 84-unit project next to where the Bent Inn was, in 2023; and the 104-unit Share Westside this year.
He also plans to open a two-story commercial complex, the Good Word Social Club, next to the Westside complex early next year.
Contact Eli Segall at esegall@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0342.
