A Mandarin Oriental condo furnished with Tui Lifestyle’s Avenue collection
A new brand of turnkey interior design hopes to lure buyers of second or third homes to Las Vegas with affordable luxury-room packages now available at CityCenter. Brokers are excited to welcome the company, Tui Lifestyle, whose designs seem tailor-made for the type of high-rise buyer attracted to the Strip.
“In CityCenter, it’s about buying into and being part of a residential community,” says Nicole Nejezch, director of sales for CityCenter Realty. “We’re located in the heart of the Strip and our buyers have access to all the excitement of Las Vegas.” The turnkey option is an attractive choice for second-home buyers, she says, because of the time savings. “It allows them to immediately begin enjoying the lifestyle they envisioned when they purchased at CityCenter.”
Miami-based Tui offers a dozen interior options that can be mixed and matched inside Helmut Jahn’s 37-story, 335-unit Veer Towers and the 47-story, 225-unit Residences at Mandarin Oriental Las Vegas, designed by Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates. Prices start at $12,995 for a one-bedroom residence, and include custom-made upholstery, case goods, and mattresses.
Add to that the Turnkey Collection for $6,995, which features more than 144 items, including fine art, bed linens, bath towels, cookware, fine porcelain china, glassware, custom-made flatware, scented candles, and bathroom essentials, right down to the soap dish, toothbrush, and toothpaste. Tui keeps costs down by designing, manufacturing, and marketing the collections itself. A complete home remodel can be done within 14 days.
“We searched them out; we like that Tui is commensurate with CityCenter quality and aesthetics,” says Tony Dennis, executive vice president of CityCenter’s residential division. “We have tried to position turnkey furniture packages within five percent of the purchase price.”
Tui comes to Vegas on the heels of successes such as the relaxed, upscale style found at downtown Miami’s 67-story Marquis Residences, designed by Arquitectonica. The four-year-old firm counts Francis Ford Coppola and Jennifer Lopez among its clients; it has also provided complete interiors for Extreme Makeover: Home Edition. Tui, headed by former Marine-turned-CEO Jason Atkins and Palm Beach interior designer Noranit “Tui” Pranich, boasts a 7,500-square-foot showroom in New York’s SoHo district alongside Ralph Lauren and Armani, as well as locations in Miami, Toronto, Atlanta, and Scottsdale. Tui Lifestyle, which opened in 2008 with three employees, today has more than 65 employees, along with a 285,000-squarefoot distribution center and 22 buildings with 46 design models throughout the United States.
“We are very excited to enter the Las Vegas market and showcase our collections,” Atkins says. “CityCenter was a perfect fit. We believe Las Vegas buyers will benefit from the flexibility offered by our collections.” Ready-to-go Tui packages carry names like Sophisticated, Innovative, Deluxe Lazy, Riviera Avenue, Metropolitan, and East Hampton. Sophisticated, for example, features modern luxury furniture with an Asian twist, including sofa and lounge chairs upholstered in silk-blend fabric flanked by ebonized teak cubic side tables. The custom coffee table has a built-in space for a specially made porcelain vase and flower arrangement. The Metropolitan package is all black leather, polished stainless steel, and dark walnut finishes.
“It’s really hard to come by immediate gratification,” Dennis says. “But Tui Lifestyle comes as close as possible with a proven track record for delivering value-added products with little or no effort on behalf of the buyer.”
Veer Towers and Mandarin Oriental have 560 condominiums, with 162 units still available for purchase. At Mandarin Oriental, one-, two- and three-bedroom units range from 1,110 to 4,000 square feet, with prices starting at $975,000. Veer Towers offers studios, one-, two- and three-bedroom flats, as well as penthouses from 500 to 3,300 square feet, with prices starting at $350,000.
CityCenter broke ground during the height of the real estate boom but finished during a deep recession, forcing owner MGM Resorts International to take hundreds of millions of dollars in write-downs on the condominium supply. As a result, CityCenter, which had 2,400 condominiums available when it opened in December 2009, began a rental program for both unsold and owned condominiums late last year. In addition, sales efforts for the unsold residences inside the 57-story Rafael Viñoly-designed Vdara were halted; the 1,500-unit, crescent-shaped building now operates as a nongaming hotel.
