Viva Las Vegas

Twenty-nine-year-old Leonardo DiCaprio, who'll appear later this year on the screen as Howard Hughes, has bought an apartment in one of Mr. Hughes's favorite haunts: Las Vegas.

The star of "The Aviator" spent about $1.5 million for two adjacent two-bedroom units at Las Vegas's new Panorama Towers. The 33-story high-rise is being developed by Lawrence Hallier, founder of Taxi Tops, a mobile advertising firm, and Andrew Sasson, the proprietor of the Light nightclub chain in Las Vegas and Jet East, a hot spot in New York's Hamptons.

The 420-foot-tall tower will include a deli, gourmet grocery, coffee bar and bakery with wood-burning pizza oven, and one-acre pool.

Mr. DiCaprio will combine the units, which have eight-foot walls of glass, to create a 3,300-square-foot apartment, but won't be able to move in until next summer, when the development is complete, a person close to the deal says. Mr. DiCaprio declined to comment.

In Las Vegas's suburbs, Siegfried Fischbacher has withdrawn from sale his five-bedroom, five-bath home in a gated community. His show at the Mirage with partner Roy Horn remains closed in the wake of Mr. Horn's tiger-caused injuries and stroke last fall.

Mr. Fischbacher, 65, is spending much of his time caring for his partner, who is trying to learn to walk again. Mr. Fischbacher had put his house on the market last spring for a few weeks at $2.9 million. He declined to comment.

Cooling on the High End

Mr. Fischbacher's experience reflects a cooling in Vegas's upper-end market. About 470 homes with price tags of more than $1 million remain for sale. The city's top-priced home remains on the market after 11 months. Completed last year, the mansion -- owned by Michael Galardi, the former owner of live adult-entertainment clubs called Cheetahs, Jaguars and Leopard Lounge -- is listed for $20 million and has 22,000 square feet, with five bedrooms including a master bedroom that's more than 1,000 square feet, 10 baths, a 15-car garage, five fireplaces and marble floors.

But overall, Vegas home prices increased 52% in the second quarter of this year from the year earlier -- the highest annual rise anywhere in the quarter century of records kept by the National Association of Realtors. The federal government owns most of the remaining developable land on the city fringes, making it hard to obtain, says Robert Genzer, planning director of the City of Las Vegas. So developers have begun to focus on high rises, with more than 45 condominiums, condo-hotels and time-share projects either announced or on the boards. Like Mr. DiCaprio's building, the Panorama, many are a short stroll from the lights of the Strip. (The building is just west of the Bellagio Hotel & Casino.)

Meanwhile. New York real-estate mogul Donald Trump and Phil Ruffin, owner of the New Frontier Hotel & Casino, are planning to begin constructing Nevada's tallest building in the spring, the 64-story Trump International Hotel & Tower, on the north end of the Strip at Las Vegas Boulevard and Fashion Square Drive.

Colorado Swings

Pro golfer and golf-course designer Greg Norman has bought two properties, Seven Lakes Lodge and the adjacent Pollard Ranch, in Meeker, Colo., and an auction of the 3,300 acre properties was called off. The sale price totaled $16 million, public records show. The seller, buyout king Henry Kravis, had listed the properties for $18.5 million, then later decided to auction them Sept. 23 when no buyer was found.

The two properties are operated as a single resort (created from a dude ranch Mr. Kravis bought in 1991), with seven trout-stocked lakes and a 15,000-square-foot main residence and separate executive cabin designed by Vail architect Gordon Pierce (the interiors were designed by Mark Hampton). The resort was designed for sportsmen, with everything from fishing to sporting clays, but no phones or televisions (and no golf course).

Mr. Norman, who said in a statement he plans to use the property for friends and family, already owns an 8,200 acre ranch adjacent to the Pollard Ranch. National Auction Group of Gadsden, Ala., handled the sale.

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