New regional mall set for Summerlin area

Friday, March 21, 1997 | 11:59 a.m.

A 1 million-square-foot regional mall is planned by the Howard Hughes Corp. as part of the retail development of the Summerlin master plan.

Riding contacts established by the corporation's new parent company, the Maryland-based Rouse Co., Hughes intends to open the new center by 2000.

John Goolsby, president and CEO of the Howard Hughes Corp., told a luncheon meeting of the Clark County Bar Association Thursday that five major department stores would anchor the mall, to be built just south of Charleston Boulevard at the proposed western leg of the Las Vegas Beltway.

Goolsby said three of the lead tenants have committed to the project, but he would not disclose what retailers would open doors at the mall, which would be slightly larger than the Galleria at Sunset.

The beltway, a key component to the Las Vegas Valley's transportation plan, is still on the drawing board, Goolsby said, but because of its importance to Summerlin's retail access, preparations for the western leg are being made ahead of schedule.

Goolsby also said the Donald Reynolds Foundation, a philanthropic organization, would move its headquarters to a Summerlin location.

Goolsby showed slides of right-of-way preparations already being undertaken on the beltway between Charleston Boulevard and Cheyenne Avenue, the outer reaches of the existing Summerlin area.

The Hughes CEO told a crowd of about 100 at the Golden Nugget that eight residential villages at Summerlin are either under construction or completed. Of the master plan's 22,000 acres, only 5,000 have been developed. More than 11,000 homes have been sold since February 1991 resulting in a population of about 24,000.

Summerlin is considered the most successfully sold master-planned community in the country. Goolsby noted that Summerlin's residential developers had an 11 percent market share, which he said is testimony to the white-hot housing market Las Vegas has experienced this decade.

Now that the residential areas are filling, retail centers are developing within the community. A center anchored by a Vons supermarket and a Longs Drug Store are the first retail outlets being built within Summerlin's interior. Longs, a Walnut Creek, Calif.-based company, is new to the Southern Nevada market.

Goolsby said Summerlin is due for commercial development to better serve the residential population as well as provide jobs within close proximity. He noted that 4,000 are working at The Crossings Business Center and that other major projects for the area include a phone center serving TRW and the 120-bed Summerlin Medical Center.

Several new private and public schools including Palo Verde, the first public high school for the area, and the new Faith Lutheran Junior/Senior High School, Summerlin's sixth private school, are new to the neighborhood.

Construction also has begun on an area to centralize several contractors' residential models. Willows Village is the first residential area under construction in the new Summerlin South master plan, a 6,000-acre complex south of Charleston Boulevard.

The Howard Hughes Corp. became a subsidiary of the Rouse Co., one of the nation's leading developers of retail shopping malls, last year. Since acquiring Hughes, Rouse has seen the value of its stock climb 60 percent. It closed Thursday at $29.625, unchanged from its previous New York Stock Exchange price.