LAS VEGAS — An Arizona businessman who prefers to fly below the radar has bought a hefty piece of the Las Vegas Strip, purchasing the former Holy Cow Casino, Cafe and Brewery site, once destined to be an Ivana Trump condo tower, for $47 million.

The purchase of the 2-acre site, on the northeast corner of Las Vegas Boulevard and Sahara Avenue, was completed in September, according to Clark County land records.

The plot is situated diagonally across from a multibillion-dollar resort planned by MGM Mirage Inc., Kerzner International Holdings Ltd. and Dubai World, and north of the Sahara hotel-casino. It's zoned to permit developers to apply for a casino license.

The buyer, Steven Johnson, a 58-year-old businessman who has a residence in the upscale Desert Mountain-Renegade Golf Course community in Scottsdale, Ariz., said he's not sure what he intends to do with it.

"I haven't finalized my plans yet," Johnson said by phone. "I thought it was a good piece of property. At the moment there's really not much to say."

Johnson, a real estate dealer who purchased the plot through his company Aspen Highlands Holdings LLC, has made several big transactions in Las Vegas, and said he's been buying and selling plots in the city for about 20 years.

Many of them were sites later turned into Walgreens drug stores, including one on the Las Vegas Strip near the MGM Grand hotel-casino and another at the corner of Charleston and Las Vegas boulevards. Both deals were made with a partner, James Peterson of Albuquerque, N.M.

In April 2003, the partners also paid the LeWinter family $32.5 million for the former Rosewood Grille on the Strip, a restaurant that had been there since the 1950s. The 0.64-acre parcel, between the Venetian and the under-construction Palazzo casino-resort, will become another Walgreens. Johnson and Peterson leased the site to Walgreen Co., as well as six floors of retail space above it to Venetian owner Las Vegas Sands Corp., which also bought the airspace above that for a future high-rise condominium, for undisclosed terms.

The price per acre of the plot, at more than $50 million, well exceeds what was considered to be a high-water mark set in May when Elad Group agreed to pay $1.2 billion to New Frontier hotel-casino owner Phil Ruffin for a plot on the Strip at around $35 million per acre.