Plans limp along for mall meant to spur NLV renewal

by Mike Trask
LasVegasSun.com

For nearly a decade, North Las Vegas has been pursuing ambitious plans to give its aging downtown a makeover.

To help execute the effort, the city's Redevelopment Agency began plotting ways to draw fresh businesses and new excitement to the beleaguered 2-mile stretch of Las Vegas Boulevard North.

What would really help trigger interest in the area, city officials concluded, would be a large shopping center - nearly a half-million square feet of shops and eateries, the kind of place that would draw traffic downtown, create jobs and generate tax revenue.

Last year, to further boost the effort, the City Council decided to build a nine-story, $165 million City Hall in the redevelopment area, too.

The center has taken on even more importance after the Silver Nugget decided to hold off plans to upgrade its property, leaving the weight of downtown's future on the shoulders of the new retail mall. In 2007 a Southern California development company promised to build just what the city needed. It would be called Las Flores, a two-story, $100 million shopping mall that would, because of its mix of tenants, be especially attractive to North Las Vegas' Latino community.

But in the roughly three years since Las Flores was conceived, its construction seems no more of a sure thing today than it was when it was first pitched - and it may be in jeopardy because of tightfisted lenders.

City officials still hold great hopes for it.

The City Council last year approved preliminary plans for the center that showed architectural renderings and sketches of how the complex would be laid out. There was so much excitement, the meeting was covered on the evening news.

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