More retail coming for western Las Vegas

Retail choices for residents in western Las Vegas and Summerlin continue to grow.

The 220,000-square-foot Sahara Center at the northeast corner of Sahara Avenue and Hualapai Way is scheduled to open in early October. It will join The Shops at Summerlin, a 1.4 million-square-foot retail center that will open this fall south of Red Rock Resort.

Construction at the 18-acre Sahara Center site started in September. The finished project will feature a 205,000-square-foot retail center and six pad buildings.

Sahara Center is a project of EHB Cos. of Las Vegas, which partnered with IDB Group to build One Queensridge Place and Tivoli Village. But that partnership has dissolved, and EHB is no longer associated with those projects.

Sahara Center will serve the western valley. Its anchor stores include T.J. Maxx, Stein Mart, Sprouts Farmers Market, HomeGoods and Petco.

Sahara Center and The Shops at Summerlin will complement each other, EHB President Frank Pankratz said.

“It speaks to what we see about the economy that it’s gradually strengthening,” Pankratz said. “Rooftops in the west valley continue to be built, and the consumer wants the convenience of what the tenants we have brings to them. It’s good for the market.”

Sahara Center has more than 100 construction workers onsite. Workers are installing landscaping, and paving will start in early May, Pankratz said. Retail tenants will take over the spaces in late June or early July to complete work, he added.

EHB principal Yohan Lowie designed Sahara Center, which will count restaurants among its tenants.

“It will have an energizing feel to it, and happy flow to it,” Pankratz said. “It feels different than other neighborhood centers, and it will cater to many thousands of rooftops in a close radius to the site.”

In November, EHB said Sahara Center was 60 percent leased. Pankratz said the center will be almost fully leased when it opens.

EHB and IDB were co-developers for Renaissance, a proposed 700,000-square-foot enclosed shopping and dining project across the street from Tivoli Village. The Renaissance was to include 100 condominiums.

Renaissance had been scheduled to open in 2015, but the project remains on hold. Pankratz said he has no update and declined to discuss the project’s future.

Renaissance is on 23 acres on the north end of the Boca Park retail development across Alta Drive from Tivoli Village, an office and retail project that will open its second phase by the end of 2015.