The Lakes is a

planned community A planned community, planned city, planned town, or planned settlement is any community that was carefully planned from its inception and is typically constructed on previously undeveloped land. This contrasts with settlements that evolve ...

located within the city limits of

Las Vegas Las Vegas (; Spanish for "The Meadows"), often known simply as Vegas, is the 25th-most populous city in the United States, the most populous city in the state of Nevada, and the county seat of Clark County. The city anchors the Las Veg ...

Nevada Nevada ( ; ) is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, Western region of the United States. It is bordered by Oregon to the northwest, Idaho to the northeast, California to the west, Arizona to the southeast, and Utah to the east. N ...

. It is located in the western part of the

Las Vegas Valley The Las Vegas Valley is a major metropolitan area in the southern part of the U.S. state of Nevada, and the second largest in the Southwestern United States. The state's largest urban agglomeration, the Las Vegas Metropolitan Statistical Area i ...

near the Spring Mountains and

Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area The Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area in Clark County, Nevada, is an area managed by the Bureau of Land Management as part of its National Landscape Conservation System, and protected as a National Conservation Area. It is about west ...

. The centerpiece of the community, and its namesake, is a large man-made lake, Lake Sahara. It was originally planned to have two man-made lakes but was downscoped to one. It was built from the mid-1980s to the mid-1990s, and at the time was at the edge of development in the valley. It consists of a mixture of

gated communities A gated community (or walled community) is a form of residential community or housing estate containing strictly controlled entrances for pedestrians, bicycles, and automobiles, and often characterized by a closed perimeter of walls and fences. ...

consisting of large

single-family homes A stand-alone house (also called a single-detached dwelling, detached residence or detached house) is a free-standing residential building. It is sometimes referred to as a single-family home, as opposed to a multi-family residential dwelli ...

, condominia, commercial areas and

office An office is a space where an organization's employees perform administrative work in order to support and realize objects and goals of the organization. The word "office" may also denote a position within an organization with specific ...

s. The community is bounded by

Sahara Avenue Sahara Avenue is a major east-west roadway in the Las Vegas Valley. The former State Route 589 (SR 589) comprised a large portion of the street. The roadway is named after the Sahara Hotel and Casino, which itself is named after the Sahara ...

to the North,

Durango Drive Durango Drive is a major north-south road in the Las Vegas metropolitan area, Nevada, United States, located on the west side of the city. Route Southern half Durango Drive's southern terminus is at an intersection with Starr Avenue in Enterpr ...

to the east,

Desert Inn Road Desert Inn Road, also known as Wilbur Clark D. I. Road, is a major west-east road in the Las Vegas metropolitan area, Nevada, United States, part of the Las Vegas grid road system. It is named after the former Desert Inn hotel and casino. Des ...

to the South, and Hualapai Way to the West. Several other notable

communities A community is a social unit (a group of living things) with commonality such as place, norms, religion, values, customs, or identity. Communities may share a sense of place situated in a given geographical area (e.g. a country, village, to ...

are adjacent, including

Summerlin Summerlin is a master-planned community in the Las Vegas Valley of Southern Nevada. It lies at the edge of the Spring Mountains and Red Rock Canyon to the west; it is partly within the official city limits of Las Vegas and partly within uni ...

to the west and Peccole Ranch and Canyon Gate to the north.

Economy

Citicards, a subsidiary of

Citibank Citibank, N. A. (N. A. stands for " National Association") is the primary U.S. banking subsidiary of financial services multinational Citigroup. Citibank was founded in 1812 as the City Bank of New York, and later became First National City ...

, located its main Payment Processing Center here in 1985, as the centerpiece of The Lakes community. The

United States Postal Service The United States Postal Service (USPS), also known as the Post Office, U.S. Mail, or Postal Service, is an independent agency of the executive branch of the United States federal government responsible for providing postal service in the ...

has since created two ZIP codes to handle the large volume of mail involved. In an effort to avoid having the negative connotation of

credit card A credit card is a payment card issued to users (cardholders) to enable the cardholder to pay a merchant for goods and services based on the cardholder's accrued debt (i.e., promise to the card issuer to pay them for the amounts plus the ...

payments going to Las Vegas, these ZIP codes have been assigned the place name The Lakes, Nevada. Citibank transitioned the center to mortgage processing in the late 2000s, and closed the facility in 2014.

References

Las Vegas Planned communities in Clark County, Nevada {{Portal bar, Nevada, United States