Drive past the Stephanie Street gate this month and you'll see two towers climbing against the McCullough Mountains, cranes still working the upper floors. A site that, three years ago, was just renderings on a developer's website is now concrete and steel rising out of eleven acres inside MacDonald Highlands. If you've lived here a while, you probably remember when the Four Seasons Private Residences Las Vegas first showed up in the local news cycle. What you may not have clocked is that the year attached to that announcement has not changed since it was first printed.
In July 2023, Forbes reported that the project would "debut in 2026." That was the number. Reporting from late 2024 described the site as still in active blasting and grading, with vertical construction expected to begin around the following September. That means the towers have had roughly a year of climbing time as of now, for a project whose marketing copy across various listing pages still uses that same 2026 date it carried before a single floor existed. More recent industry estimates have already started to diverge, some still pointing to late 2026, others pushing the finish further out. A date that was supposed to mark the finish line has instead become a moving target that keeps landing on the same word.
For residents who actually live behind these gates, that gap between the promised year and the physical progress on Rock Peak Drive is the real story right now. Not the finished renderings. The two years or more of daily life you're likely still living next to.
What's Actually Rising Right Now
Strip away the marketing language and the facts are these: two towers, one at 24 stories and one at 25, designed by the international architecture firm Wimberly Allison Tong & Goo. Together they'll hold 171 residences plus six standalone villas, built on an 11-acre parcel tucked inside MacDonald Highlands near the Stephanie Street entrance. It's being developed jointly by Four Seasons, Azure Resorts & Hotels, and Luxus Developments, and multiple outlets covering the project have called it the first high-rise built in the Las Vegas area since before the last recession.
That last detail matters more than it sounds. A 24- and 25-story tower pair is not a spec home addition or a clubhouse remodel. It's a category of construction this valley hasn't attempted in close to two decades, and it went up on a hillside site that needed blasting before a single floor could be poured. Structural work like that doesn't compress. A tower that only started climbing a year or so ago still has interior build-out, amenity spaces, and finish work ahead of it, which is exactly why the completion estimates have started to spread out rather than converge. That's worth knowing if you're the one hearing the equipment every morning and wondering how much longer this goes.
The Clubhouse Already Told You How This Goes
If you want a preview of what construction on this scale looks like inside these gates, you don't have to guess. MacDonald Highlands has been here before, just at a smaller scale. When the community resurfaced sections of Stephanie and Liege using an asphalt treatment process several years ago, the club's own newsletter to residents laid out exactly what to expect: loud equipment, daytime traffic rerouted around the work zones, restricted parking Monday through Friday, and driveway access temporarily blocked while surfaces cured.
That was a road project. The Four Seasons build is a multi-year vertical construction site sitting on 11 acres near one of the community's own guard gates. If a resurfacing job warranted that level of resident notice, it's reasonable to expect the tower construction to bring its own version of rerouted traffic patterns and slower movement near Stephanie Street, particularly as the project moves from site work into the heavier phases of vertical build-out. The precedent exists. It's just been at a smaller scale than what's coming.
What's Already on the Table While You Wait
The finished project promises a restaurant and wine bar called Noble Heights, with the concept led by longtime Las Vegas restaurateur Elizabeth Blau and chef Kim Canteenwalla. That's a real, named addition to look forward to, and their involvement is a signal the culinary side of the project isn't an afterthought.
It's also, by any read of the timeline, still years out.
What's open today is what's always been open: DragonRidge Country Club's 40,000-square-foot clubhouse, home to three distinct dining rooms. Dragon Grille handles the casual end, daily lunch and dinner specials plus weekend brunch, the kind of place you land after a round of golf or a tennis match. The Montrose Steakhouse is the dressier option, built around premium steaks and seafood with Strip views from the dining room. The Onyx Bar rounds it out with a sports-bar energy, small plates, weekly happy hour, and live music. None of that is new information if you've lived here a year or more, but it's worth restating now: while the renderings for Noble Heights sit years away behind scaffolding, the clubhouse kitchen you already have access to isn't going anywhere.
The Trail That Isn't Waiting on Anyone
Not everything inside these gates is on a construction timeline. The McCullough Hills Trailhead, sometimes labeled Trail 601, runs roughly 8.5 miles through the Sloan Canyon National Conservation Area, connecting an access point on Henderson's Mission Drive to another trailhead across the range on McCullough Hills Parkway in Anthem. AllTrails lists the out-and-back version at just over 16 miles round trip, and notes the best months to hike or ride it run from September through May, which puts the coming cooler season squarely in the trail's prime window. Dogs are welcome on leash, and the terrain is groomed dirt rather than technical singletrack, which is part of why it draws hikers, trail runners, and mountain bikers in roughly equal numbers.
None of that changes based on what's happening near the Stephanie Street gate. The trail out the back of the community keeps running on its own schedule, through its own season, regardless of how many months the tower project adds to its own timeline. If the construction noise is wearing on you some mornings, that's the reset that's always been a short drive away.
The Actual Takeaway
The promised opening year for the Four Seasons Private Residences has stayed fixed at "2026" since the project was first announced, even though the towers themselves only started climbing within the past year or so. That's not a criticism of the project. Towers this size take the time they take, and a first-of-its-kind build in this market was never going to be quick. But if you're living inside these gates right now, the honest planning assumption isn't "almost done." It's a construction site that's likely to be part of your daily routine, in some form, for a while yet. Which restaurant reservations you can already make, and which walking route stays quiet regardless, are the two facts worth actually holding onto this year.
If you're curious how a project of this scale tends to move property values or buyer interest inside a gated community like MacDonald Highlands over the next few years, that's the kind of question The Zhu Realty Group tracks closely, alongside the rest of what's actually happening on the ground here, not just in the renderings.