Black Friday shopping crowds generally light across Las Vegas Valley

Trey and Venice Thompson were visiting Las Vegas from San Diego this week to see family and “on a whim” decided to go shopping on Black Friday.

Envisioning lines of shoppers with people waiting in chairs and tents, they arrived at the Best Buy electronics store on Charleston Boulevard at the 215 Beltway around 6:15 a.m. But to their surprise, just a few others had beaten them to it.

“It looks so empty we were wondering at first if this is even a thing anymore,” Trey said.

Black Friday is known around the country for luring huge crowds of bargain-hunting shoppers who storm retailers’ front entrances the second they open, sometimes fighting each other for discounted TVs, clothes and other goods the morning after Thanksgiving.

But at various Las Vegas Valley retail hubs, it seemed relatively calm and quiet Friday morning. Shoppers were out and looking for deals, and foot traffic picked up later in the day, but retailers weren’t overrun in the morning with typical Black Friday crowds, perhaps in no small part because stores were open Thanksgiving and are offering discounts online as well.

“It’s very, very light,” Debbie Roldan, visiting from Southern California, said Friday morning while strolling through Downtown Summerlin, the open-air mall at Sahara Avenue and the 215 Beltway.

Roldan went to a Kohl’s in northwest Las Vegas on Thursday night an hour or so after it opened, and she said there was a line “all the way around the store.”

She went to a Target on Friday before heading to Downtown Summerlin, however, and “hardly anybody” was there.

A few miles east of the Strip, a steady stream of shoppers were making their way through Boulevard Mall by around 10:30 a.m Friday, but it wasn’t overloaded.

Terry Cleary, of Southfield, Michigan, who has family in Las Vegas and visits regularly, was in Macy’s at Boulevard and said there was ample room to park at the mall.

“Last year, we couldn’t find a parking space,” he said.

Still, about 100 people, maybe more, were waiting to get in to shoe store Urban Necessities.

Chris Grant, of Las Vegas’ Summerlin community, was waiting outside the store for her son, who had been in line for about two hours. But the turnout overall at Boulevard felt “very light” for a Black Friday, she said.

Grant said she did most of her shopping online Thursday night, adding that on the internet, buyers get better deals and home delivery, letting them avoid the crowds.

“Even my friends and family, no one said they’re going out today. They’re going to buy online,” she said.

In Henderson, the Galleria at Sunset mall had sizable crowds by around 11:30 a.m., with some congestion in the main walkways. But all seemed orderly — no mobs rushing for doorbuster discounts.

Charles Johnson, of North Las Vegas, was operating a clothing and accessories kiosk at the mall. Galleria was “kind of slow” when it opened at 6 a.m., but the crowds steadily grew, he said.

Overall, he figured Black Friday felt more like a good weekend turnout.

Meanwhile, by around 1 p.m., Fashion Show mall on the Strip seemed busier than usual, with throngs of shoppers walking around. And eastbound Spring Mountain Road off Interstate 15, somewhat empty hours earlier, was clogged with cars trying to drive toward the mall, which is popular with locals and tourists alike.

The National Retail Federation, an industry group in Washington, D.C., said this month that an estimated 137.4 million people in the United States were planning to shop or considering shopping Thanksgiving weekend. The projected turnout included in-store and internet shopping.

According to the survey, 21 percent of expected shoppers planned to shop on Thanksgiving Day; 74 percent on Black Friday; 47 percent on Saturday; and 24 percent on Sunday.

Of course, not everyone tries to battle the crowds Thanksgiving weekend. And overall, Las Vegas retailers had mixed results in November 2015.

Clark County furniture and home furnishings stores booked about $66 million in sales for the month, up 10.5 percent from November 2014, while health and personal care outlets sold $65 million worth of goods, up 5 percent.

Clothing and accessory stores, meanwhile, notched around $327 million in sales last November, down 0.9 percent from a year earlier, and electronics and appliance stores booked $106 million in sales, down 5.5 percent, according to the Nevada Department of Taxation.

Contact Eli Segall at 702-383-0342 or esegall@reviewjournal.com. Follow @eli_segall on Twitter.