Developer plans to rehabilitate eyesore development, just one of many investors doing so in the valley

For vandals on the prowl, Centennial Hills Center was just too tempting.

They smashed windows, sprayed graffiti and ripped out the copper from the abandoned medical-office project. As if to rub it in, they even set the elevator on fire.

Some investors now bet that the Las Vegas property, despite its trashed and troubled past, will prove a big money-maker.

Florida developer Malcolm Sina and his partners acquired the partially built, 24-acre project on Durango Drive near Centennial Parkway last fall. They are cleaning it, finishing construction and working to fill it with doctors, nurses and other health care workers.

Construction crews are on site, and Sina aims to have the eight-building first phase open for business by years end. If and when he sells or leases out that section, hell break ground on the 10-building second phase.

Las Vegas Mayor Carolyn Goodman, City Councilman Steve Ross and others will gather there Wednesday to celebrate the projects turnaround.

Its been sitting there as an eyesore, Sina said.

Sina is one of several developers in the past year or so who bought local, mothballed real estate developments victims of the recession in order to finish them. Buyers often scoop them up at steep discounts, but these bargains are far from risk-free in economically wobbly Las Vegas.

The local office market, for instance, is one of the worst in the country, with sky-high vacancy rates and minuscule asking rents. Health care buildings are faring a bit better than general office properties but still are limping along.

Its not as though medicals thriving out there, CBRE Group broker Carla Cole said.

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Developer plans to rehabilitate eyesore development, just one of many investors doing so in the valley