Nordstrom to come to Fashion Show Mall

Monday, May 22, 2000 | 6:09 a.m.

Nordstrom, the Seattle-based retailer known for its attention to personal service, will build a store at the Fashion Show mall, the company said today.

Brooke White, a company spokeswoman, said a three-level, 200,000-square-foot department store would open in fall 2002 or spring 2003. It would be the company's first store in Nevada.

Local retail analysts have speculated for weeks that Nordstrom would land at the Fashion Show, an 840,000-square-foot shopping mall at the center of the Las Vegas Strip that has already announced plans to double its size by 2003.

The Rouse Co., which owns the mall through an affiliate company, the Howard Hughes Corp., said it has signed four new anchor tenants for Fashion Show -- Saks Fifth Avenue, Lord & Taylor, Bloomingdale's, and Dillard's -- as well as expansions for existing anchors Neiman-Marcus, Robinsons-May and Macy's.

Rouse planned to announce the signing of Nordstrom at a groundbreaking and fashion show tonight, coinciding with the opening of the 47th spring convention of the International Council of Shopping Centers, which has drawn 30,000 retail executives to Las Vegas this week.

The announcement comes nearly a year after Nordstrom's announcement of plans to build a three-level store at a proposed 1.2 million-square-foot retail center between the Mandalay Bay and Luxor hotel-casinos. That deal collapsed last year when developer Westcor Partners of Phoenix pulled out of the project.

Nordstrom executives have said they have wanted a retail presence on the Las Vegas Strip for years. Company Co-President Pete Nordstrom addressed Preview '99, a Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce-Nevada Development Authority event in January 1999, expressing the company's desire to build a Las Vegas store.

The announcement to build a 225,000-square-foot store between Mandalay Bay and Luxor followed in May at the 1999 ICSC convention.

Analysts say a Nordstrom store would attract more shoppers to the Strip instead of hurting existing retailers.