Summerlin mall good sign for all

The Las Vegas Valley has taken more than its fair share of hits since the economic downturn started hammering the region in 2008. The housing market plummeted, unemployment jumped as high as 14.6 percent in mid-2010, and commercial construction came to a screeching halt.

But the region continues on a slow rebound, and now there appears to be more light at the end of the tunnel. The housing market is making a solid comeback, and the unemployment rate — though still far from stellar at 10.1 percent — is significantly better. And construction projects are moving forward, including the much anticipated Shops at Summerlin. For the past five years, steel girders have marked the only sign of the project, prompting many to think it had been abandoned, never to be completed. Rather, the project was in an extended delay, with hopes that the economy would turn around.

As View reporter Jan Hogan wrote earlier this week, the turnaround is here. Tom Warden, senior vice president of community and government relations for Howard Hughes Corp., said that construction is again underway. The 106-acre site, just south of Red Rock Resort, will ultimately house three anchor tenants — Dillard’s and Macy’s are already on board — and about 125 shops. Like the successful Town Square Las Vegas development on Las Vegas Boulevard South, the development will be open-air, rather than an enclosed mall.

And relatively speaking, it won’t be long before shoppers can take advantage of the new option, with the opening pegged for late 2014 or early 2015.

In Ms. Hogan’s report, Mr. Warden noted that around the country, the economy is still an issue for projects similar to the Shops at Summerlin. “I think you’d be very hard-pressed to find a regional retail shopping area of this magnitude going forward in today’s economy, anywhere in the country, really,” Mr. Warden said. “So, I would say this is one of probably a very small handful of potential locations for regional retail.”

For which Las Vegas should be grateful. The mall will create more construction jobs, but better still is what will happen when it opens. The stores and restaurants will employ a lot of people long after construction is done. That’s really good news for a local economy that still needs all the good news it can get.