Upgrade comes in a big box

By Mike Trask (contact)

Monday, Aug. 20, 2007 | 7:08 a.m.

Paul Griffin works six days a week behind the counter at Las Vegas Grocery, a little store without gas pumps at Water Street and Boulder Highway in Henderson.

Most customers stop in for a pack of smokes or a tall boy. "Beer and cigarettes are the thing," Griffin says. The place doubles as a Greyhound bus stop. Across the street, near the old factories, is a huge dirt lot. Soon that space will hold a Target, the kind of big-box retail store that dominates most of Henderson.

Target will anchor a 73-acre shopping center, one of the keys, many in the city think, to revitalizing the Boulder Highway corridor. The area encompasses 8,850 acres surrounding the nearly six-mile stretch of Boulder Highway from Gibson Road to Horizon Drive.

The store manager, Shahid Asiam, is happy with the neighboring development.

"It will be very helpful," he says. "We might get more business. They had to do something. This area has pretty much been the same since World War II."

By this area he meant roughly a one-mile radius around the store. The rest of Henderson, as most who've been to Southern Nevada know , has changed remarkably. After more than a decade of growth, Henderson remains one of the 20 fastest-growing cities in the country. Now it wants to spread some of its fancy pants development along Boulder Highway. The Henderson section is a checkerboard of strip malls of varying occupancy, fast-food restaurants and occasional locally run joints, including unexpectedly named Las Vegas Grocery.

Sometime in the next few weeks the city will unveil its vision for the corridor.

The area features 1,285 acres of vacant land, and a city study shows that more than 3,000 housing units and about 3 million square feet of both commercial and industrial space could be added in the next decade.

About 12 percent of vehicle trips in the valley come from or go to the Boulder Highway corridor , according to the Regional Transportation Commission. By 2009 the RTC plans to provide rapid transit, via the much-discussed MAX bus, along Boulder Highway from downtown Las Vegas to Horizon Drive.

"It will be a tool for us to spur economic revitalization, help reduce the growth of traffic congestion and improve our air quality while making the surrounding areas attractive places for people to live, work and socialize," Mayor Jim Gibson said in his State of the City address..

On Aug. 28 residents can offer their thoughts at a community meeting.

Griffin is pumped about the new bus. He now takes the regular one every day down Boulder Highway to and from his apartment just north of the city line. "I've never seen a city with slower bus than this," he said between afternoon customers.

The new bus line, which will run down the median, provides an opportunity to build transportation stations at the nine stops in Henderson. That could lead to business development, which would help another issue.

"I believe it will improve the look of Boulder Highway," Councilwoman Gerri Schroder said . "There are some areas that need some improvements in their aesthetic."

The random muffler shops and tattoo parlors - along with likes of the Las Vegas Grocery - might stay. But they will have new surroundings.

Griffin isn't too worried. He said he will probably shop at Target if the lines aren't too long, but he expects his regulars won't brave the busy parking lot every time they want a bag of pork rinds or a single Swisher Sweet.

On a recent day, one of those regulars walked out carrying a six pack of Budweiser, promising that he would pay tomorrow.

"It's Thursday and he's pro'ly a little light," Griffin said.

Try finding that at Target.