Shoppers crowd county parking

Wednesday, Aug. 13, 2003 | 11:11 a.m.

The newly opened Las Vegas Premium Outlets have drawn droves of shoppers to the shops -- including many who have chosen to park their cars in the lots conveniently located across the street.

That has created a problem for Clark County government officials, because the lots are meant for the government center's employees and patrons. On Tuesday, shoppers were still trying to park at the government center, although parking spaces were available at both the north and south ends of the mall.

"We're concerned about a couple of things," county spokesman Erik Pappa said. "One is security. We're having to patrol the lots more frequently."

The other issue is that spaces in the lot directly across from the mall on Grand Central Parkway are usually grabbed by government employees in the morning, Pappa said. Some employees who leave for lunch are coming back to find that no spaces are open.

Alec Pavo, a Clark County security guard, sat under an umbrella Tuesday preparing to shoo away potential parkers for the mall from the county lots. He said it has been a busy job since the mall opened Aug. 1.

"On the weekends, it's like a circus over here," Pavo said.

He said shoppers apparently see the large entrance to the mall on Grand Central -- which is actually on the back of the mall -- and instinctively try to park across from that entrance. That puts the shoppers in the county's parking lots.

Chelsea Property Group, developers of the new mall of 120 stores, and county officials are meeting to resolve the parking issue.

The mall, according to Las Vegas city planners, has plenty of parking on the far side from the county building. The city's zoning code requires 957 parking slots for the mall, based on a formula of a little over three slots per 1,000 square feet of retail.

The mall provides 1,312 slots, Las Vegas Economic Development Manager Iain Vasey said.

Not all of the slots are available right now because workers, finishing up the construction on the project, are still using the mall lots. Parking areas on the north and south ends of the mall, however, had numerous open spaces.

Michele Rothstein, a spokeswoman for Chelsea Property Group, said the parking problem will probably be temporary.

She said visitors should soon start arriving by taxi, and local shoppers will probably not come during busy daytime hours, after the initial rush for the opening of the mall.

"Locals will eventually figure to come earlier in the day or later at night," Rothstein said. Vasey, with the city's development team, said his personal experience with other retail developments is that traffic drops off after the initial excitement of opening. He emphasized that the parking issue is between the developer and the county, but sees a positive side to the problem.

"They're bringing property on line as fast as they can and they are still working on improvements," Vasey said. "It's a good problem to have in some respects. It indicates people are shopping there."

That is good news for the city, which is banking on the mall as a centerpiece of its ongoing efforts to pump up the moribund downtown economy.

"It's an indication of the pent-up demand we have had for this kind of product in the central area of the city," he said.