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Downtown Las Vegas betting on Neonopolis

By Dawn Wilensky

When most people think of Las Vegas, they think of Las Vegas Boulevard, the avenue of world-famous casinos. Known as the Strip, this well-known thoroughfare has seen booming development in the last 10 years.

Downtown Vegas hopes to draw tourists by combining entertainment and retail.

Far less known is downtown Las Vegas. But the builders of an upcoming retail/entertainment center, Neonopolis, want to change that.

The new 250,000-square-foot project actually is the latest effort to reverse downtown Las Vegas' fortunes. It is also a prime example of private/public efforts to redevelop core downtown areas. Nearly 30 years after its 1960s heyday, downtown's small hotels and casinos, as well as the once-grand Golden Nugget, were surrounded by urban blight and drug trafficking. Tourism was dwindling, and concerned Golden Nugget owner Steve Wynn began around 1990 to meet with politicians to discuss how to build market share in the downtown area.

Out of those talks grew the Fremont Street Experience, the area's first revival phase, completed in December 1995. The $70 million project, an enclosed nightly computer-generated sound and light show, spans a four-block section of Fremont Street between Main and Fourth Streets (equal to 4.62 football fields) and attracts 10 million to 11 million people every year.

But Fremont Street's nearly 2.1 million lights and 540,000 watts of sound and concert quality music failed to prevent tourists from boarding hordes of buses back to the glitzy Strip once the shows had ended. In fact, the Citizens Area Transit Route 301 line (which stops just two blocks north of the Fremont Experience) has been called "one of the busiest bus routes in the world," transporting approximately 9.5 million passengers in 1998, according to the Regional Transportation Commission of Clark County.

Slated to break ground this month, Neonopolis grew out of the desire to capture the spending dollars of these tourists as well as create an attractive gathering place for locals. The project, which will be contained within the Fremont Street Experience, will house 60 tenants and is scheduled for completion in November 2000.

Development is under the auspices of PRISA II, a commingled real estate investment trust managed by Prudential Real Estate Investment, Newark N.J., which took control from original developers World Entertainment Centers in January. The development is being pursued under the guidance of the Las Vegas City Centre Development Corp., a public/private partnership that guides the City of Las Vegas on downtown development issues. Design for the $84 million project is under the direction of the Los Angeles office of RTKL Nevada Corp. and ID8, the firm's entertainment design studio. Phoenix-based Kitchell Contractors is the general contractor.

Neonopolis will be unlike attractions found on the Strip because it will create a bridge between tourism and residential foot traffic much like New Orleans' Bourbon Street, with true outdoor walk areas, said Stanley Eichelbaum, SCMD, president of Marketing Developments Inc., a Cincinnati-based marketing and research company actively involved in the development of Neonopolis.

The project will be divided into four quadrants encircling a center pedestrian plaza. The five-level structure will consist of two floors of below-grade parking, and three levels of retail/entertainment venues on a 300-by-400-foot block.

The building itself has 600 available parking spaces. An additional 1,400 spots will be supplied by an adjacent parking garage component (to be developed and operated under the City of Las Vegas Development Agency) that broke ground in February.

Los Angeles-based Mann's Theatres will anchor the center with an 11-plex state-of-the-art cinema offering stadium seating for 3,000 patrons. The theater, in particular, is designed to draw city residents to the project.

"Cinema operators look at resident population when planning a theater because tourists usually don't spend much time in a theater during their vacation. The location is ideal because it is centrally located with convenient highway access to routes 515, I-15 and 95," said Norm Garden, principal in charge of Neonopolis and head of design at RTKL.

Neonopolis' developers hope that motorists traveling on these roads will be attracted to its mix of distinctive restaurants, cafes and pubs offering a wide variety of cuisines as well as a mix of retail stores.

Race Rock, an entertainment-oriented food/beverage retailer designed around a racing theme, will be one of a maximum of six restaurants. The restaurant, which has another location in Orlando, will occupy levels one and two of the garage building.

The identities of other tenants were being closely guarded pending final approvals. However, Garden did reveal that neither theme restaurants nor traditional mall stores will be part of the mix.

Instead, restaurants and retailers will be a blend of highly expressive tenants geared toward entertainment and education with strong visual statements, according to Eichelbaum.

"Part of the challenge is to get retailers who can keep shelves well-stocked, who have high levels of service and who have the right internal systems in place to meet high customer demand. Most importantly, the retailers and restaurants in Neonopolis will reach out to the customer instead of having the customer reach out to them," Eichelbaum said.

"You need to go beyond just creating desirable tenants and eating destinations -- you need to create an environment where people will want to hang out," Garden concurred. "We have a courtyard with a curved linear side which allows the tenants on the curve to present themselves to people in the courtyard."

Neonopolis will not only be a draw for night owls but for lunchtime crowds -- a 40,000-square-foot food emporium on the second floor, as well as the restaurants, are expected to draw white-collar workers from the recently completed Justice Center nearby.

In addition, each of the restaurants will include a terrace to allow customers easy viewing of the light and sound shows while they eat.

Concerns regarding the intense Las Vegas desert climate are being addressed with a variety of options which may include glass roll-up doors, a greenhouse, a retractable canvas-covered roof and portable wind screens. These elements will be flexible so that they can be removed when the weather changes. In addition, mist systems in the courtyard and terrace zones will be installed to cool off customers with a soft fine spray of water.

"People theorize that with the advancement of technology, we have more free time on our hands, but it's just not true. Management of free time is hard, and these places give us minivacations where we can get away and have fun with the family for two, three or four hours," said Garden.