Drive in through the Valle Verde gate this year and you will notice something that was not there before. Above the tile rooflines and the DragonRidge fairways, two towers of steel and concrete have been climbing past the ridgeline that has always defined the top of this community. According to a construction update the developer released in January, crews were adding roughly a floor a week to each tower at that point, a pace that puts both towers on track to reach their full height well ahead of the developer's own year end target for topping out, which means the shape of MacDonald Highlands' skyline may already be close to settled by the time you read this.
That is worth sitting with, because MacDonald Highlands was never supposed to have a skyline. The community was built on the opposite idea: custom hillside lots, low density, and views that stayed unobstructed because nothing inside the gates was ever allowed to compete with the terrain. What is rising now, Four Seasons Private Residences Las Vegas, is the first project in the community's history to break that rule on purpose. Understanding what is actually happening this year, and what stays the same while it does, is the difference between watching construction with mild anxiety and knowing exactly what your neighborhood is becoming.
A Community Built Around Not Building Up
MacDonald Highlands has always sold restraint at scale. Guard-gated, set into the McCullough Mountains, and organized around dozens of small custom-lot neighborhoods, the community's entire architectural code was designed to protect sightlines to the Strip and the valley floor. Nothing was supposed to rise above the hillside itself. For more than two decades, that held.
Four Seasons Private Residences changes that math without changing the gate count. The project is a 24-story and a 25-story tower, per Las Vegas Review-Journal coverage of the development, plus a set of custom single-family homes built alongside them, all inside the same footprint that has otherwise stayed low to the ground since the early 2000s. The Review-Journal has described the project, together with a downtown condo tower announced later, as among the first true high-rises completed in Las Vegas since the late 2000s, and it is happening on a hillside that was previously known for keeping views open, not creating new ones from higher up.
The scope of the non-tower piece has grown as the project matured. Coverage of the announcement described six standalone villas alongside the towers. By the time trade press covered the project's construction financing at the end of 2025, that had become 21 custom-built single-family homes, a meaningful expansion of the low-rise component that sits closer to what longtime residents recognize as MacDonald Highlands' original product.
What "Topping Off" Actually Means This Year
The construction timeline is worth spelling out plainly, because "topping off" and "move-in" are not the same milestone, and confusing them leads to the wrong expectations about what the rest of 2026 will look like from your own driveway.
| Milestone | Status |
|---|---|
| Site excavation and foundation work | Complete |
| Vertical construction on both towers | Underway, advancing about one floor per week per tower |
| Topping off of the North and South Towers | Targeted for the end of 2026 |
| Occupancy | Targeted for mid-2027 |
That gap between topping off and occupancy is real, and it matters for how the rest of this year feels from your own driveway. If the pace reported in January held, both towers were on track to reach full height well before the window the developer set aside for topping out, which means the visual change may already be finished, or close to it, even though nobody moves in for roughly another year. Finish work inside a topped-off tower is a quieter phase than the excavation and framing residents have already lived through, so expect the noise and the truck traffic to keep easing even as the shape overhead stays exactly where it lands.
The project has cleared financial hurdles that stall a lot of announced towers before they ever go vertical. Construction financing of $781 million was secured in 2025, structured around a $526 million senior loan from JPMorgan alongside $255 million in mezzanine and preferred equity, according to a December 2025 report from commercial real estate trade press covering the deal. Sales momentum has moved just as fast. A May 2024 Review-Journal report put the project at 46 percent sold, with Craig Eddins, the project's executive vice president, telling the paper:
"It's a better pace than we thought."
By the end of 2025, reporting on the project put that figure near 75 percent sold. A construction and sales update from this past January noted that only two two-bedroom floor plans and a single multi-level Sky Villa remained available at that point, which tells you the building most residents will end up living next to was already close to fully spoken for well before it is finished.
The Restaurant That Is Not Open Yet
Once complete, the towers bring something MacDonald Highlands residents have not had inside the gates before: a second real dining option beyond the DragonRidge clubhouse. Four Seasons has partnered with Wolfgang Puck Fine Dining Group to operate the signature restaurant inside the completed project, and the development has also struck a first-of-its-kind arrangement with RH Contract to offer fully furnished residences built around the towers' own interior architecture.
None of that exists yet. The restaurant is not seating anyone this year, and the furnished units are not move-in ready. But it is worth knowing now, while the towers are still just structure, what they will eventually add to the neighborhood's day-to-day options, because it reframes what the construction dust is actually building toward.
What Has Not Changed While The Cranes Are Up
The good news for anyone tired of looking at scaffolding is that everything MacDonald Highlands residents already use is still fully open and unaffected by the tower construction. The DragonRidge Country Club clubhouse runs more than 40,000 square feet and still holds three separate dining venues, including the Highlands Grill, an upscale spot for contemporary American fare with weekend brunch and a terrace that looks out over the golf course and the Strip beyond it. The bar and patio overlooking the 18th hole is still the easiest place in the community to catch a game or grab a drink after a round. The golf shop still runs its 10 percent member discount on apparel, and the Grand Highlands Ballroom is still booking weddings and private events with the same skyline view the towers are now sharing.
If you want distance from the site work rather than a closer look at it, the McCullough Hills Trailhead sits right at the edge of the community and connects directly into the McCullough Mountain Range, with residents also getting trail access toward Sloan Canyon's petroglyph areas and a community pickleball setup that has nothing to do with the construction schedule. None of that changes because two towers are climbing on the other side of the ridge. If anything, this is the year to use it more, since a quiet trailhead walk is a better way to spend a Saturday than watching a crane cycle from your own patio.
The Real Story Is What The Community Is Adding, Not Losing
The easy read on all of this is that MacDonald Highlands is trading its low-density identity for a high-rise one. That is not quite right. The community is not converting, it is adding a floor plan type it never had. The custom hillside estates, the golf course frontage lots, the guard-gated privacy that has defined this address for two decades, none of that goes anywhere. What is new is a vertical, full-service tier with hotel-grade amenities that simply did not exist inside these gates before, alongside a growing count of additional custom single-family lots built as part of the same project.
That is the actual thing to understand about MacDonald Highlands in 2026: this is the year the shape of that new tier becomes visible and permanent, while the version of the community that has always been here keeps running exactly as it has. Residents watching the towers rise this year are not watching their neighborhood change so much as they are watching it grow a second wing it never had room for before.
If the changing skyline has you thinking about what any of this means for your own property inside the gates, or you are simply curious how a project like this tends to affect values in a guard-gated community over time, I am always glad to talk it through. Reach out to Rosanna Bieszczat to schedule a consultation.
