By Jacquelynn D. Powers, Photographs: Tomas Muscionico

n business today, Fortune 500 companies are bought and sold in a Monopoly-like madness. Longtime mom-and-pop establishments are routinely usurped by Wal-Mart and the rest of the big-box herd. And the game of real estate is just that: a fast-paced, money-making sport, where the players sell, build and move on to the next project in rapid succession. So it's increasingly rare to find someone with Ron Boeddeker's stamina and longevity. One of his ventures, the 31,000-acre oceanfront Waikoloa Beach Resort, has been in development for 40 years in Hawaii. And his Lake Las Vegas Resort, located in Henderson, shows no signs of abating with the addition of the Island, a floating parcel of land at the back of the property slated for major growth.

Obviously, Boeddeker is not in it for the short haul. He's not about flipping condos or the quick-and-easy deal. The California native has been bound to his Lake Las Vegas community, which began as a wild dream, for more than two decades. “Twenty years for any project for anybody in any business is a lot of their life," Ron acknowledges. “When you take on a project like this, which was so early in its development, it meant there was a bigger commitment on the part of everyone, not just myself. We had to bring it to the point where it was accepted, first in the financial community and then the local community." These were hard hurdles to overcome, as Boeddeker, in 1986, proposed to build a lake in the middle of the barren desert. This was not just a revolutionary idea—it was downright scandalous. “This property has been out here for a long time," he says. “The locals had been riding their motorcycles around it. They didn't envision this lake to take place. And the nation itself didn't look at Las Vegas as a destination resort, they looked at it as a place to game."

Las Vegas was built on vision and gumption, though. From the pyramid and Eiffel Tower on the Strip to the perfectly planned communities in Henderson and Summerlin, everything has been about perseverance and foresight. So why not construct a 320-acre lake 30 minutes off the Strip? Why not surround it with sophisticated hotels and residences? Why not add four extraordinary golf courses designed by the biggest names in the industry? Why not hire opera star Andrea Bocelli to sing in the middle of this manmade lake? For Boeddeker, an engineer, these were all plausible realities. And in 1986, he set out to create this Mediterranean-themed community, with his own version of Lake Como in the center ...

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