A few years ago, a horror studio planned to film a post-apocalyptic movie at the shuttered Terrible’s resort in Jean, a remote outpost south of Las Vegas. The hotel, once slated for demolition to make way for a new industrial park, now sits blighted—its boarded-up and broken windows, weed-filled parking lot, and fire damage make it look straight out of a dystopian film set. Although part of the resort has already been demolished, much of it remains standing, symbolizing the slowdown in Southern Nevada’s once-booming warehouse market.
Reno developer Par Tolles purchased the Jean property, envisioning a 1.9 million-square-foot industrial complex called the South Vegas Industrial Center. However, with the region’s industrial vacancy rate spiking from just 2 percent in 2022 to 11.5 percent in 2024—the highest in over a decade—Tolles is delaying new construction, citing the need for caution in an oversupplied market.
Southern Nevada’s warehouse sector, which surged during the pandemic as e-commerce demand soared, is now grappling with empty buildings, fewer tenants, and landlords offering perks like free rent. Developers have sharply cut back on new projects: industrial space under construction dropped from 17.6 million square feet in late 2023 to 8.4 million in late 2024. The pandemic boom led many developers to build speculatively, but as demand has cooled, the market is correcting.
National trends, including high interest rates and uncertainty from tariff policies under the Trump administration, have further dampened enthusiasm. Many tenants are hitting pause, wary of unpredictable costs and economic volatility.
Tolles remains optimistic about Jean’s long-term prospects, touting its location as ideal for logistics—especially for truckers hauling goods from Southern California ports. The site even attracted the production of the movie “The Battle of Absolute Dominion,” which planned to use the derelict hotel as a filming location and sought over $1.8 million in Nevada tax breaks. The film, set in 2085, imagines a world devastated by religious terrorism and saved only by a global martial arts tournament.
Although Tolles still believes in the future of the Jean project, he acknowledges that regular logistics buildings are at a standstill until more space is absorbed by tenants. While some activity continues, particularly from data centers, the industrial market’s rapid expansion has finally caught up with itself, leaving sites like Jean’s Terrible’s hotel as relics of both cinematic and economic limbo.
