Triple Five, the developer of the world’s largest mall, the West Edmonton Mall, in Alberta, and the Mall of America, in Bloomington, Minnesota, fixed its sights on Las Vegas in 2006. It announced the Great Mall of Las Vegas, to be built at the northwest corner of the valley, where U.S. 95 and the 215 Beltway meet. It was to cover 2 million square feet, just edging out Fashion Show Mall as the largest in the Vegas area. When the project was announced, Triple Five already had 70 acres in hand and was on the hunt for more.
Anchor tenants were to include Dillard's, JC Penney, Sears, and Robinson-May, along with Regal Cinemas. (See Question of the Day Archives 1/17/2006 for more coverage of the project at the time.) Construction was to begin in 2008, finishing either in August 2009 or May 2010. Perhaps it’s just as well that Triple Five deferred, as the mall would have opened in the depths of the Great Recession.
As you have probably surmised, Triple Five liked to think big: West Edmonton Mall has 800 retail outlets, 110 restaurants, an indoor water park, an amusement park, a dolphin-petting zoo and an ice-skating arena. Consuming 5.3 million square feet, it is equivalent to 48 city blocks. Compared to that, the 2 million-square-foot Great Mall of Las Vegas would have been a piker. Still, although close to the affluent Summerlin master-planned community, it would have been a long haul away from most of the population of Las Vegas.
"The growth is unbelievable, when you look at the master plan for the community and the planned growth over the next 10 years. We also asked people in the industry where they wanted to be, and everybody from Victoria's Secret to Macy's said the northwest," Triple Five Senior Executive Vice President Jean Marc Joveidi told the Sun "Vegas is growing very fast, with 7,000 to 10,000 people coming here every month. It really needs to cater to people with quality projects and that's what's missing in Vegas." (Unfortunately for Triple Five, people would soon be leaving Las Vegas by the thousand.)
Still, "There is a concern that there is a lack of regional facilities throughout that northwest corridor," Applied Analysis principal Jeremy Aguero told the Las Vegas Sun. "The northwest and southwest [portions of the Las Vegas Valley], those corridors are farther away from regional retail centers than any other area." Like its Canadian forbear, the Great Mall of Las Vegas was to have ice skating (indoor) and an amusement park as well as miniature golf. (No dolphins, though.) Shoppers would stroll beneath a vast, glass dome intended to create an outdoor atmosphere (abetted by fountains and grass), albeit in air-conditioned comfort.
The project was intended to cost $750 million. The dimensions of it were to include 50 acres of retail, three stories tall, and covering 1.2 million square feet. Some of that was intended for office space and for 800 condominium units.
Then, of course, the Great Recession hit, taking out the commercial underpinnings for a megamall. By early 2009, it was painfully evident which way the economic winds were blowing and Triple Five scrapped the Great Mall. By June the project was in default and was eventually foreclosed upon. KeyBank subsidiary Oreo Corp. sold the site to Tivoli Village developers EHB Corp. in January 2011. The sale price was $6.3 million … a priced-to-move $105,000 an acre and, aside from several delays and a good few casualties along the way tenant-wise (the most recent being Alex Stratta's tapas concept), not to mention a highly convoluted behind-the-scenes ownership saga, the project has steadily gone from strength to strength and construction on Phase 2 (at Rampart and Alta) is close to completion.
