Wealthy buyers are shelling out millions for vacant dirt lots in one of Nevada’s most exclusive neighborhoods, and locals aren’t happy.
The developers behind The Summit Club in Summerlin, a guarded enclave on the edge of Las Vegas, recently sold about $134 million of undeveloped land to high-profile buyers, according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal. That averages out to about $6.7 million per acre, and that’s before construction begins.
The latest expansion of the Summit Club covers more than 50 acres of suburban wilderness, reserved for about two dozen custom-built mansions. So far, no one has opened land. Among the new owners: billionaire Switch founder Rob Roy, who paid a staggering $33 million for a five-acre home.
The community, co-developed by Discovery Land Co. and Howard Hughes Holdings, marketing itself as “Summerlin’s most exclusive luxury community.”
It already counts movie star Mark Wahlberg and Raiders owner Mark Davis among its residents, along with an 18-hole golf course, fine dining clubhouse, and “comfort stations” stocked with snacks between rounds.
The rise of the Summit Club highlights how extreme wealth continues to reshape communities across the United States. Critics say this luxury land rush fuels inequality and accelerates sprawl in a region already struggling with water shortages, rising temperatures, and shrinking open space.
Las Vegas is America’s fastest-warming city, and its water supply from Lake Mead has dropped to historic lows.
This is not the only community that makes news for elite excess. On Florida’s Indian Creek Island, known as the “Billionaire Bunker” and home to Jeff Bezos and Tom Brady, residents recently secured a controversial drainage deal after years of waste seeping into Biscayne Bay.
Instead of upgrading their septic systems, lawmakers reportedly inserted language into a state bill that would allow the village to divert sewage through neighboring towns.
Both stories show the growing gap between luxurious lifestyles and the realities of environmental stress. While ordinary homeowners face growing climate risks, wealthier residents are buying up virgin land and, in some cases, bending infrastructure to suit their needs.
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