Construction began in 2008 on the Shops at Summerlin Center, a planned 106-acre retail district that's scheduled to include 125+ stores, including anchors in Macy's, Dillards, and Nordstrum, plus restaurants and both hotel and office space. The concept behind the project is, in the words of the developer, to "create a vibrant, walkable downtown in the heart of the affluent 22,500-acre master-planned community" that is Summerlin.
However, the ambitious project coincided with the implosion of the economy, especially in Las Vegas, and instead of reaching its planned 2009 completion date, work was put on indefinite hold in the same year that it commenced as the developer, General Growth Properties of Chicago, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in the face of $27 billion in debts.
As part of its restructuring, GGP spun off some of its assets, including Howard Hughes Corp., which was given control of the Shops of Summerlin project. (As an aside, there's a certain symmetry to this turn of events, since the planned community at Summerlin is actually named for the paternal grandmother of Howard Hughes, who inherited the land in a swap with the federal government back in the early '50s but couldn't find anything constructive to do with it during his lifetime). In 2009, the local Las Vegas economy was still a long way from being out of the woods, so the whole project remained on ice until the latter part of last year when, as the person who submitted this question correctly points out, local media reported excitedly that it was all systems go once more and that the mall would now debut in late 2014.
We confess that we haven't been in the vicinity of the project, which is located close to Red Rock Station, in daylight hours for some time, and we hadn't been made aware of any significant activity. However, it's under unfortunate circumstances that we can confirm that construction is indeed underway once more, since at approximately 8:45 a.m. yesterday morning, a construction worker employed by the Howard Hughes Corp. met his death falling from the 1000 Block of the Shops at Summerlin site.
No further details had been released at the time of this writing, but in some kind of twisted irony, construction has now been shut down again on the site -- this time due to an investigation by OSHA and Las Vegas Metro into the circumstances surrounding yesterday's tragedy -- on the very same date, August 20, that the recommencement of work on the project was announced last year. Assuming no gross violations are discovered and it was just an unfortunate accident, we imagine work will recommence soon; we recommend anyone interested monitor "Today's News" for updates, where we'll post information as it becomes available.
