Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh has reportedly stepped down as the leader of the Las Vegas Downtown Project. The utopian living experiment has seen pushback from locals since its inception.

The news was first reported by Re/code, which has been running a multi-part series on Hsieh’s $350 million initiative to redevelop downtown Las Vegas, located north of the Strip.

Hsieh’s lawyer, Millie Chou, will reportedly take over. The project will also be laying off 30 percent of its staff. Sources told Re/code the project was losing significant amounts of money and faulted Hsieh for poor hiring choices.

In response to an email from Re/code, Hsieh put out a statement acknowledging the layoffs but asserting that his role has not changed around the Las Vegas Downtown Project and pointing to slow progress in the project. He likened the Downtown Project’s expansion to Zappos growth in its early days.

He said, “So far, I would say that Downtown Project has been moving at roughly twice the speed of Zappos in the early days, and just like any startup, has gone through the same range of ups and downs that we went through at Zappos – just twice as quickly, so therefore the highs and lows can oftentimes appear to be twice as intense.”

Hsieh’s statement is here: http://downtownproject.com/statement/