And now, the Main attraction

The Las Vegas shopping experience goes through its next metamorphosis Wednesday when the $750 million, 1.5 million-square-foot Town Square Las Vegas opens.

Town Square, a joint venture development by Florida-based Turnberry Associates and Las Vegas-based Centra Properties, will be more than a shopping center. It will be a place to gather at Borders Books, bring the children to movies at the 18-screen Rave Motion Pictures, grab dinner at Louis’s Fish Camp, grocery shop at Whole Foods and buy apparel at H&M, BCBG or Abercrombie & Fitch.

For users of the 350,000 square feet of office space above retail, it will be a place to do business.

“We’re building a small town,” Turnberry Retail Division President Joe Tagliola said. “We’re bringing that sense of reality to a place that for years has lived on its reputation of creating a different sense of what reality is. We’re bringing something totally different, a real sense of place.”

Town Square, on Las Vegas Boulevard South at Sunset Road, sits on 117 acres that includes the Fry’s Electronics store. Turnberry spent $5 million to build a private flyover road that takes shoppers directly into the main loop around the center from northbound Las Vegas Boulevard.

Easy accessibility is one reason the Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce decided to move its office into 25,000 square feet at Town Square, said Cara Roberts, the chamber’s public relations director. The office is behind on construction and is scheduled to open in February or March, she said.

“From the Chamber’s perspective, Town Square is really building a center of community, a place where people can conduct business, dine, bring the children, go see a movie. We’re thrilled to be part of it,” Roberts said.

She said the great collection of retail and restaurants will make it a “happening” place to hang out.

Chef Louis Osteen of South Carolina is opening two restaurants at Town Square, his first venture into Las Vegas. He said he specifically chose not to consider venues within casinos.

“We understand that the 2 million people who live in Las Vegas are always looking for new places to dine and we saw Town Square as a convenient and progressive venue that would become an ideal location for our style of cuisine and ambiance,” Osteen said.

Louis’s Fish Camp, Louis’s Las Vegas and Claim Jumper will be the first to open among more than a dozen restaurants coming to Town Square. Others include The Grape, Tommy Bahama Tropical Café & Emporium, Yard House, Texas de Brazil, Brio Tuscan Grille, Bar Louie, Blue Martini, Straits Café and Kabuki.

James Lowry, a marketing professor at Ball State University, said Town Square is part of an emerging retail trend toward “lifestyle” shopping centers. Easton Center in Columbus, Ohio, is a good example.

“It’s huge and it’s cool,” he said. “Many times they’ll incorporate office or hotels and they have unique architecture and so does the treatment of landscape. That makes them very hospitable to consumers because you’re attracted to the style of the center.”

Easton Center puts on free concerts and has game centers for children, Lowry said. Lifestyle centers don’t really need an anchor, but rely instead on many strong specialty shops, he said.

“Particularly in your area, you don’t get ice and snow, which makes it easier to be outside. Even around here, we get 20-degree weather and people are still willing to walk from store to store,” Lowry said.

With its Main Street USA design and architecture, Town Square takes on a Disneyland feel. A $3 million children’s park will have a lifesize playhouse, treehouse with climbing rope, hedge maze with animal topiaries, 35 pop-jet splash fountains and playground equipment made of Robinia wood.

“It’s going to be pretty exciting with some of the amenities like the children’s park,” Tagliola said. “You want to take your kids to see the latest Harry Potter movie in the most dramatic movie experience in the market, you go to Town Square. This (Rave) is a phenomenal theater, everything from how they use colors to the layout. It’s all digital.”

Nearby Town Square Park includes a pavilion for concerts, fashion shows and special events, a bridge that crosses a small pond, a botanical garden and a picnic area.

Turnberry’s design team traveled the world to discover elements for the 22 buildings, which feature more than 70 different facades with materials such as marble, stone and hand-painted plaster. A mission-style building sits within the center of Town Square and as the buildings move outward, they reflect different places and eras.

Town Square’s retail space is about 95 percent leased but not all of the 150 stores will open in November, Tagliola said. He wouldn’t disclose lease rates, except to say they’re dictated by certain occupancy rates and sales figures.

Tagliola said he’d be happy to see retailers do sales volume of $1,000 per square foot a month like most other Strip shopping malls. That would make lease rates “applicable” for what Turnberry wants at Town Square, he said.

Forum Shops owner Simon Property Group previously boasted $1,400-a-foot sales figures, among the highest in the country.

Centra Properties originally purchased 57 acres from Howard Hughes Corp. in 2001 and planned to develop an industrial center to serve the Strip.

Those plans were changed to mixed-use retail and office when Centra partnered with Turnberry and acquired a key parcel, the 25-acre former Vacation Village, for $25.5 million. They picked up another 14 acres of Clark County land that was formerly part of Sunset Road, west of the Strip. Fry’s Electronics has since been incorporated into Town Square.

Over the five years of development, the project’s value has grown from $500 million to $750 million, largely because of increasing land values, Tagliola said.

Tagliola said Town Square’s target demographic includes local residents who will come from surrounding master-planned communities such as Summerlin and Green Valley, and the 43 million tourists who visit Las Vegas each year.

Many of them will drive past Town Square on their way in and out of McCarran International Airport’s consolidated rental car center on Warm Springs Road, he said.

Three parking garages along with some storefront parking will provide 5,800 parking spaces.

Las Vegas-based Marnell Corrao Associates served as the project’s general contractor. Baltimore-based Development Design Group and Boston-based Alan J. Mayer Architect are the architects of record.

Contact reporter Hubble Smith at hsmith@reviewjournal.com or (702) 383-0491.