For seven years it’s been an open secret in Vegas that Caesars Entertainment (formerly Harrah’s) was not happy with Bally’s Strip frontage. Why? A long people-mover – which resembles a fallopian tube – and a garden-full of topiaries were not considered the highest and best use of that acreage. However, it took the Caesars brass literally years to decide upon a replacement.
Although the company is presently embarked upon building a shopping mall just north of the Flamingo (the project known as The Linq), it plans another 270 retail outlets for something called Grand Bazaar Shops. These were to be packed underneath dozens upon dozens of eggshell-shaped cupolas, looking something like this. Where once there was shrubbery, now there will be a forest of domes, subsequently revised to resemble shark fins. (However, a mooted re-theming of Bally’s as Horseshoe Las Vegas appears to have gone permanently off the table.) The long tube into Bally’s will be replaced with a shaded promenade. Groundbreaking is projected vaguely for anywhere between now and the end of the year.
British developer Harper Dennis Hobbs is the company charged with filling all 270 little spaces with retailers, taking as its model open-air bazaars in cities like Istanbul and Jersusalem. According to realty PR firm CoStar Group, Hobbs’ brief is to lure "pop-up" shopping and "the best from renowned bazaars and markets around the world … from well known brands, to unique specialty retailers found in high traffic malls, airports or shopping sites." You know the vendors who accost you in Planet Hollywood’s Miracle Mile mall? Yeah, those kind of guys. "A daily nighttime light show and digital and video signage walls will also help attract shoppers," adds the blurb. Mind you, this is the same Caesars Entertainment that uttered loud, Victorian wails of dismay when rival developer Brett Torino placed an enormous video-display screen across the façade of Harmon Crossing, a convenience-oriented mall on the southeast corner of Planet Hollywood.
Caesars – or Hobbs’ – goal is to lure 20 million shoppers to Grand Bazaar annually; in other words, slightly more than one out of every two tourists who visit Las Vegas. Local residents are also touted as a potential customer demographic, although they’re generally streetwise enough to give Strip retail a wide berth. However, the number and smallness of the retail outlets – more like newspaper stalls or kiosks – appears to be a sensible reaction away from the costly excesses of Crystals, a massive temple of high-end products whose enormous scale only highlights its relative emptiness. Booth dimension at Grand Bazaar range from three feet by 10 feet to as much as 25 feet by 40 feet … if you’re a food or beverage retailer. Multiple spaces can be consolidated into single, larger ones.
A line of copy places Grand Bazaar at "the epicenter of the Las Vegas Strip." This suggests that the market is a stray component of Caesars CEO Gary Loveman’s grandly conceived but never unveiled "Epicentre," which was to have been a super-meta-resort encompassing everything from Harrah’s Las Vegas at least as far as Paris-Las Vegas, and extending two blocks eastward of the Strip. An online leasing brochure is long on visitor statistics but short on concrete detail of when the project is expected to begin or be ready for occupany.
Pressed by VegasChatter.com, a Bally’s Las Vegas spokesman would only say – even though the Bazaar already has its own Web site and brochure – that "Formal announcement of the project and its tenants will be made later this fall."
