Furniture showcase proposed for downtown railroad land

Monday, Sept. 25, 2000 | 11:41 a.m.

Las Vegas may become the furniture showroom capital of the West Coast if a proposal to build a 1 million-square-foot structure is approved for a section of the old Union Pacific Railroad property.

Officials of International Furniture Mart Limited Liability Company were to announce at a news conference this afternoon plans to build the project on 56 acres at Grand Central Parkway near Alta Drive.

"This is a major project that will increase economic activity in the downtown area," said Greg Borgel, a Las Vegas planning consultant who will bring the project before the Planning Commission and Las Vegas City Council for approval.

"This major regional showroom will bring periodic furniture conventions and trade shows to Las Vegas and be open the rest of the year to the public."

Borgel said the first phase of the project will include a 10-story building and 1 million square feet of display space.

The furniture complex will not be in competition with Las Vegas furniture stores because it will not sell directly to the public except for close-outs and floor models from trade shows and conventions, Borgel said.

The public would be allowed into the showroom to get ideas from all types of furniture and costs, then go to a local furniture store with more knowledge to make the best retail purchases, Borgel said. Also, he said, local furniture stores would place orders through the huge showroom for some of their retail stock.

"This will be only the second regional furniture showroom like it in the United States," Borgel said, noting that the other is in North Carolina.

International Furniture Mart LLC, based in Southern California, already has been approved to build a retail store at the northwest corner of Alta Drive and Martin Luther King Boulevard, not far from its proposed showroom, Borgel said.

The massive property owned by the Union Pacific Railroad -- which sparked the founding of Las Vegas in the early 20th century -- had long been sought by city officials as prime development land for a western downtown area.

In the 1980s, there was much talk of building another strip of casinos, with Atlantic City gaming mogul Donald Trump eyeing a resort for the area.

However, in recent years the focus has been multiple use development, with the County Government Center the first project built on the site.

Last week it was announced that 10.64 acres of the old railroad land would be used by Cisco Systems, Worldwide Wireless Networks Inc. and AT&T to establish a high-tech campus complete with a dot-com incubator.

A dot-com incubator is essentially commercial space that will house various Internet start-ups that need help getting off the ground.

"There is so much land to be developed that not one single project can suck it all up," said Borgel, who has been in Las Vegas for 30 years and has witnessed the changing trends for use of the railroad land.