In a bid for diners, two shopping malls in Las Vegas’ resort corridor are getting mini face-lifts to make room for more restaurants.
The projects, at Fashion Show mall and Miracle Mile Shops, come as developers build more restaurant and retail space up and down the Strip, hoping to corral tourists, who increasingly bypass casino floors for other places to spend their money.
Work crews are building 22,000 square feet of restaurant and retail space along the Strip at Fashion Show, on Las Vegas Boulevard at Spring Mountain Road.
Sushi and sandwich chain Kona Grill has signed a lease for one of the three planned restaurant spaces, and expected retail stores out there include Davidoff cigar bar, according to mall spokeswoman Janet LaFevre.
Businesses are expected to open by year’s end, she said.
The retail space will include seven free-standing “cabanas,” LaFevre said, adding they are new concepts and not like traditional kiosks seen in Fashion Show and other malls.
At Miracle Mile, about two miles south of Fashion Show, management plans to rip out the mall’s last exterior remnants of its former North African-themed decor and replace it with a more modern look, part of a 60,000-square-foot renovation.
That portion of the mall, along Harmon Avenue, looks like a faux-medieval fortress, a holdover from Miracle Mile’s early days as the Moroccan-themed Desert Passage.
A rendering shows a renovated portion of the Fashion Show mall on the Strip.
“The idea is to create a completely redesigned look,” General Manager Jerry Irwin said.
Inside, work crews have been chopping up the area into several restaurant spaces. So far, Buffalo Wild Wings and Texas Land & Cattle have signed leases there, taking about 17,200 square feet combined, Irwin said. They also are slated to open by year’s end.
Restaurants are “the most active part” of the retail business now, and just as hotels try to get people to stay put as long as possible while visiting Las Vegas, malls want the same thing, said real estate broker Matt Bear of CBRE Group.
The longer people stay in one location, the more likely they are to spend more money there.
“That’s the bottom line to all of it,” Bear said.
Fashion Show, at 2 million square feet, is owned by General Growth Properties, the second-largest U.S. mall owner.
The 500,000-square-foot Miracle Mile, connected to Planet Hollywood, is owned by Tristar Capital and RFR Holding.