Vegas retail growth still hot: Summerlin deal shows local strength

Jennifer Robison

Tuesday, Feb. 5, 2002 | 11:07 a.m.

R.C. Willey Home Furnishings, an aggressive new retailer in Las Vegas, is buying land in Summerlin for its second Southern Nevada store as the local retail boom continues despite the national recession.

The store will be situated in the planned South Square Community Shopping Center in Summerlin's Gardens village, near I-215 and Town Center Drive.

The deal offers evidence of sustained high growth in the Summerlin district of Las Vegas and nearby areas like Peccole Ranch.

Despite a national recession and a local unemployment rate hovering above 6 percent, Matt Bear, a principal with commercial brokerage NewMarket Advisors, said he's seen no slowdown in retailers' plans to locate stores in fast-growing parts of the Valley.

"The good real estate is as strong as it ever was," Bear said. "The Class B and Class C retail is starting to struggle a little but, but Class A real estate, like that in Summerlin and Peccole Ranch, is as active and sought-after as it ever was."

R.C. Willey's South Square plans are a small part of the ongoing retail boom in the Summerlin and Peccole Ranch areas.

The Sport Chalet, Barnes & Noble and Whole Foods, a national health food and gourmet grocery store, are all planning locations in the Crossroads Commons shopping center on the southeast corner of West Charleston Boulevard and Fort Apache Road in Peccole Ranch.

Across the street, on the northwest corner of the intersection, Williams-Sonoma, the Gap, Pottery Barn, Talbots and Banana Republic are among the upscale retailers planning locations at Rampart Commons, which is scheduled to open this spring.

And the second phase of Boca Park, a massive, three-phase Triple 5 project on the northeast corner of Charleston and Fort Apache, is set to open in March with upscale interior decorating and furniture retailer the Great Indoors as an anchor.

In Summerlin, on West Charleston Boulevard near I-215, the 62-acre Canyon Pointe shopping center opened last summer with Costco as an anchor. Best Buy is rumored to be in negotiations for space at Canyon Pointe, and national restaurant deals are in the offing there as well.

"It's a testament to how attractive Las Vegas continues to be as a place to live," Bear said. "Regardless of our short-term economic issues, people who have a dream of getting a better job and a better lifestyle know we still have that here."

For R.C. Willey, that population growth makes it the ideal time to begin construction of a second store.

"We decided it was the right time to proceed with a second store based on our success in our first store in Henderson," said Scott Hymas, chief executive of the Salt Lake City-based retailer.

Hymas wouldn't disclose sales and foot traffic data for R.C. Willey's Henderson location at Stephanie Road and I-215, but he did say the store's performance has been higher than company executives expected.

Hymas said the Summerlin store's exact acreage and square footage haven't yet been determined. However, a spokesman for the Hughes Corp., Summerlin's developer, said he expects R.C. Willey to buy about a third of South Square's 47 acres.

Bear, of NewMarket Advisors, called R.C. Willey's second site selection "brilliant," and said the Summerlin store may have greater drawing power than the retailer's Henderson store.

"The freeway is really going to condense the time it'll take for people coming from north and south Summerlin, and even the southwest part of the Valley," Bear said. "With that placement, they're going to pick up all of the southwest market, Summerlin and Peccole Ranch. It's a very brilliant location based on that drawing power.

"There's still so much (population) growth to the south. The southwest is just beginning to start up, and south Summerlin is only in the beginning stages of selling. It's potentially a better location than the Henderson store."

Hymas said he expected the Summerlin land purchase to close in the next 45 days.

The store is in the design stages, with construction scheduled to begin "as soon as possible," he said. He said he expects the store to be complete in the first half of 2003.

Hymas said R.C. Willey's second store would closely resemble its Henderson location, which has 128,000 square feet of showroom space and a 60,000-square-foot, attached warehouse.

Hymas said company officials are still evaluating warehouse options for the Summerlin store, though it likely won't share the attached configuration at R.C. Willey's Henderson location.

"We'll probably find some off-site warehousing that would better support more of a distribution-center operation," Hymas said. "We're still finalizing some warehousing, so it would be premature to say how our warehousing would support both stores."

Though Hymas said the Summerlin store will offer the same basic product lines -- furniture, electronics, appliances and flooring -- consumers will initially notice some subtle differences.

"There'll probably be a little greater selection of higher-end goods in Summerlin, based on what our customer surveys have indicated in our Henderson store," Hymas said.

He said the retailer also plans eventually to offer more upscale products at its Henderson store.

Layton Construction of Sandy, Utah will build the Summerlin store, and Salt Lake City-based Valentiner Crane Architects is designing it. Hymas said his company is still evaluating how much the store would cost to build; he declined to disclose how much the Henderson store cost to build.

R.C. Willey might not confine its Southern Nevada presence to two stores.

"We will continue to evaluate the need for a third store," Hymas said. "From day one, we've analyzed where we're drawing our sales from. We will continue to do that.

"We're not committed to (a third store), but on the other hand, it's not out of the question."

Bear said a third R.C. Willey store would almost be a necessity for the company.

"With over a million people, it's difficult to cover as large an area as Las Vegas without three stores. I believe they will have a store in the northwest, in the Town Center area, and that store may come within the same timeframe as it took for the Summerlin store to follow the Henderson location."