From Las Vegas Review-Journal
$350M Las Vegas Academy renovations rival valley’s biggest projects
Story by Spencer Levering, Las Vegas Review-Journal
• 3h •
6 min read
The new gym at the Las Vegas Academy of the Arts Friday, Oct. 3, 2025 in Las Vegas.© Benjamin Hager/Las Vegas Review-Journal/TNS
Las Vegas Academy of the Arts is in the midst of a decade-long, $350 million campus upgrade, a price tag that rivals some of the valley’s major construction projects.
It’s the same amount the Rio budgeted to fully renovate its off-Strip property in 2023.
If the school renovation goes over budget, it could match the $378 million, 12.5 mile-long bus rapid transit project on Maryland Parkway, or even the $382 million recently completed Interstate 15/Tropicana Avenue Interchange project aimed at improving traffic near the Strip.
Construction continues at the Las Vegas Academy of the Arts Friday, Oct. 3, 2025 in Las Vegas.© Benjamin Hager/Las Vegas Review-Journal/TNS
The decision to spend big on Las Vegas Academy, a public high school, raised an eyebrow from Anahit Baghshetsyan, a policy analyst with local think tank Nevada Policy. She questioned the decision to spend $350 million to create only 400 additional seats when other campuses are under strain.
The new parking garage at the Las Vegas Academy of the Arts Friday, Oct. 3, 2025 in Las Vegas.© Benjamin Hager/Las Vegas Review-Journal/TNS
“Maybe it would have been wiser to kind of refocus their attention on several schools at once and maybe perform capital improvement projects that were smaller but would minimize their long-term costs,” Baghshetsyan said. “This is going to shape the district’s long-term debt load and potentially limit future projects.”
But the Las Vegas Academy project’s scope aims to match its eye-popping price point. Construction crews will build a student union, two theaters, a music building and a dance building, as well as renovate three of the school’s existing buildings: Main Hall, Frazier Hall and the historic gymnasium.
Construction continues at the Las Vegas Academy of the Arts Friday, Oct. 3, 2025 in Las Vegas.© Benjamin Hager/Las Vegas Review-Journal/TNS
A new gym and six-story parking garage for the school, costing $76.3 million, have already been completed. Las Vegas Academy currently enrolls about 1,750 students and is expected to accommodate up to 400 more once the project is complete. In contrast, the Clark County School District’s newest high school, South Career and Technical Academy, cost $168.8 million to build from scratch and is expected to enroll 1,800 students each year by 2028.
The new gym at the Las Vegas Academy of the Arts Friday, Oct. 3, 2025 in Las Vegas.© Benjamin Hager/Las Vegas Review-Journal/TNS
Las Vegas Academy was built downtown in 1930 as Las Vegas High School before transitioning in 1993 to the renowned magnet school for music, dance, theater and art education that it is today. The three-phase project, which began in 2023 and is expected to take 10 years to complete, is aimed at expanding the school’s size and educational offerings while preserving its historical charm.
Historic renovation
Parts of the campus and its neighborhood are entered in the National Park Service’s National Register of Historic Places, with the administration building and gymnasium being cited as “examples of monumental Art Deco design in Las Vegas.”
This recognition requires any exterior changes to the building to first be reviewed by the Las Vegas Historic Preservation Commission, according to commission chair Bob Stoldal. He said they held countless public hearings to ultimately approve the current project and ensure historical preservation.
Construction continues at the Las Vegas Academy of the Arts Friday, Oct. 3, 2025 in Las Vegas.© Benjamin Hager/Las Vegas Review-Journal/TNS
Stoldal said if the school district had chosen to demolish Main Hall, Frazier Hall and the gymnasium instead of renovating them, it would have generated backlash from historians and locals alike.
“The community would not stand for destroying the 1930 high school, I promise you that,” Stoldal said.
Principal Lezlie Koepp said that before construction began, the campus was virtually the same as when she was a student at then-Las Vegas High School. Out-of-use lockers line the halls of the 18-acre campus’s oldest buildings, and built-in phone booth rooms have been repurposed as small storage closets.
Koepp said she feels the project to renovate Las Vegas Academy is long overdue. The school district had only spent about $13 million to improve the campus since 1998, district officials said.
With new buildings and key infrastructure upgrades, Koepp hopes to offer an expanded curriculum inside updated classrooms that don’t flood when monsoon season arrives, a problem she said has long plagued the campus.
“All the schools I went to were old, beat-up schools,” Koepp said. “I remember how I felt as a student and how I felt dismissed and disregarded, so the idea that they’re going to get all shiny and new is very exciting.”
As school let out on a recent Thursday afternoon, students shuffled shoulder-to-shoulder navigating the ever-changing campus’s pathways to board buses and reach rides home. Construction crews have cordoned off parts of the campus so they can build while classes continue.
Money for construction at Las Vegas Academy comes from the school district’s 2015 Capital Improvement Program, a multibillion-dollar plan funded by bonds from the state Legislature that maintains, improves and creates school facilities. The program has been revised six times since its inception to keep up with shifting economic and enrollment trends.
The new parking garage at the Las Vegas Academy of the Arts Friday, Oct. 3, 2025 in Las Vegas.© Benjamin Hager/Las Vegas Review-Journal/TNS
The program’s fifth revision, which was unanimously approved by the Clark County School Board in 2021, included plans for the current project based off a master plan for Las Vegas Academy developed in 2018.
“CCSD recognizes the importance of investing in school infrastructure to give students the best education with the resources and tools necessary to ignite curiosity, learning, and creativity,” school district officials wrote in an email. “The school is an integral part of the community that has helped to educate students who have contributed tremendously to the local community and to arts and culture throughout the world.”
Pricey priority
The estimated $350 million project comes as school district officials continue to navigate facility management while declining enrollment limits funding. September’s enrollment figures showed that the school district has a total of 286,985 students, about 7,800 fewer than what was tallied in September 2024. About 2,500 of those 7,800 students were in high school.
Construction continues at the Las Vegas Academy of the Arts Friday, Oct. 3, 2025 in Las Vegas.© Benjamin Hager/Las Vegas Review-Journal/TNS
School district officials said they project that the district will lose 2,000 high schoolers each year for the next five years, in part because of declining birth rates and families increasingly turning away from public schools.
The new parking garage at the Las Vegas Academy of the Arts Friday, Oct. 3, 2025 in Las Vegas.© Benjamin Hager/Las Vegas Review-Journal/TNS
“Our senior graduating class today, they are some of the last babies born pre-recession of 2008,” chief of facilities Brandon McLaughlin said during an Oct. 1 joint meeting with the Clark County School Board and the Bond Oversight Committee. “We’re seeing smaller cohorts at elementary and middle schools already. It’s not a thing of if it’s coming. It’s coming.”
Still, 16 of the valley’s 30 traditional public high schools remain at above 100 percent enrollment capacity, according to school district data. The most overenrolled high school, Desert Oasis, has a listed capacity of 2,544 but enrolled 3,314 students this year, putting it at over 130 percent capacity. Las Vegas Academy itself is currently at 111 percent capacity, with 1,753 students enrolled at a campus with a program capacity of 1,574.
Construction continues at the Las Vegas Academy of the Arts Friday, Oct. 3, 2025 in Las Vegas.© Benjamin Hager/Las Vegas Review-Journal/TNS
To adapt schools to the needs of students and teachers, school facilities leaders discussed options on how to best update the school district’s Facility Master Plan at the Oct. 1 joint meeting. Building new schools, replacing the district’s oldest schools, attendance rezoning and facility renovations are some of the many options on the table, school facilities leaders said.
The new parking garage at the Las Vegas Academy of the Arts Friday, Oct. 3, 2025 in Las Vegas.© Benjamin Hager/Las Vegas Review-Journal/TNS
When it came to managing Las Vegas Academy, however, the building’s historic status made some improvement options more feasible than others.
‘It’s about the memories’
PENTA Building Group, the company leading the Las Vegas Academy project, will oversee the estimated $40.3 million in renovations to some of Nevada’s most historic education buildings.
Renovations to Main Hall, Frazier Hall and the original gym, all listed in the National Register of Historic Places, are expected to begin in November 2026 following completion of the new student union, according to PENTA project executive Mitch Bernard.
The focus of the renovations, he added, will be to modernize the buildings’ infrastructure while holding true to the exterior’s original look and feel.
“When you go into those buildings, all of the systems are so outdated and … Band-Aid fixed over the course of 50, 60, 70 years,” Bernard said. “We need to go in there and be able to pull out the old, antiquated systems and bring those up to a current state.”
Contact Spencer Levering at slevering@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0253.
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