Central Vegas retailers enthused about Wal-Mart, Home Depot

Grace Leong

Tuesday, March 20, 2001 | 11:09 a.m.

The few retailers remaining at an old central city shopping center are excited that business will improve now that demolition work is set to make way for a new Wal-Mart supercenter and a Home Depot store.

Some 350,000 square feet of retail space will be demolished at Westland Fair, a 465,000 square-foot shopping center at Decatur and Charleston boulevards.

It was sold in January to Weingarten Realty Investors of Houston by LVS Group LLC for an undisclosed sum. Weingarten also completed its acquisition of another Las Vegas shopping center, Rainbow Plaza, at Rainbow and Charleston boulevards.

In recent years, several Westland Fair retailers have closed including a Phar-Mor drug store, a Builders Square home improvement store and a Computer City retail outlet. Retail analysts attributed their failures to the center's layout, in which the stores were almost hidden because they were set back substantially from both Decatur and Charleston.

"We will be demolishing the east end of the shopping center from Builders Square through the former Computer City. Wal-Mart will be taking the east end of the property and several existing retailers will be relocated within the shopping center," said Wes Miller, Weingarten's regional property manager.

Existing retailers Service Merchandise and Mountain Hams & Country Deli will be relocated, while other retailers including Petsmart, a Smart & Final store, Wherehouse Music and Blockbuster Video will remain at their current locations.

Miller said: "Decatur and Charleston is a great location for a Wal-Mart and Home Depot because of its high traffic count."

Amy Hill, Wal-Mart's spokeswoman, agreed. She said the 220,000-square-foot Westland Fair Wal-Mart, which will be its fifth supercenter in Las Vegas Valley and is scheduled to open in April 2002, is expected to "revitalize an area that had decaying retail and provide much needed services to the area."

Supercenters are typically 205,000 square feet with 65,000 square feet devoted to groceries.

"This is the first time in Las Vegas that we've taken an existing shopping center and replaced it," Hill said.

She said some 500 workers will be hired for the planned supercenter. There are currently 14 Wal-Marts and Sam's Clubs, Wal-Mart's wholesale membership club, in the Las Vegas area.

Meanwhile, Home Depot, which now has seven stores in Las Vegas and Henderson, said it plans to open its eighth store at Pecos and Patrick Lane in July and its ninth store at Westland Fair center in May 2002.

Chuck Sifuentes, Home Depot's spokesman, said the planned 116,000-square-foot Westland Fair store with an adjacent 23,000-square-foot garden center will be built at the site of Service Merchandise -- which will be relocated.

Home Depot will hire up to 200 workers.

Tennessee-based Service Merchandise, which sells home and jewelry products, said it is relocating to the site of the former Computer City within the next few weeks.

"It's a very exciting opportunity. Any additional retailers that move to our location are only going to draw traffic to our new location," said Allison McAfee, Service Merchandise's spokeswoman.

Paul Fleming, a Petsmart store manager, agreed: "I'm really looking forward to have a Wal-Mart and Home Depot here seeing that the shopping center has been empty for sometime. The emptying out began when the Phar-Mor drug store closed. Phar-Mor was like a cross between Wal-Mart and a pharmacy," he said.

Mountain Hams, which said it temporarily closed on Jan. 8 for Westland Fair's remodelling, will reopen in April at a former Kenny Rogers' location at the center.

Bookstar, a division of Barnes & Noble Inc., closed three weeks ago and its workers have been transferred to three other Barnes & Noble stores and two B. Dalton bookstores in Las Vegas, said Debra Williams, Barnes & Noble's spokeswoman.

Weingarten's Miller said the company is currently negotiating with several potential tenants for the Bookstar building.