Primm outlet mall, after years of declines, has only 1 store left
PRIMM — Mary Miramontes was browsing the aisles of Sanithrift on a recent afternoon and liked the vibe.
The store, filled with color-coded racks of apparel, offers 99-cent T-shirts, belts for $2.99, pants priced at $4.99 and other bargains.
It’s also the only place left to shop at the otherwise empty outlet mall in Primm.
“It’s kind of sad to me that there’s nothing other than this store here,” Miramontes said.
The sprawling outlet mall roughly 40 miles south of the Las Vegas Strip, in a remote outpost on the Nevada-California border, used to be packed with retailers and shoppers. But its fortunes started declining years ago amid increased competition up the highway, and the mall is now almost entirely deserted.
Primm overall is getting increasingly quiet.
It has three hotel-casino properties clustered around Interstate 15. But one of them, Whiskey Pete’s, closed last year, while another, Buffalo Bill’s, has scaled back, recently saying it was shifting from 24-7 operations.
‘Unexpected gem’
The lone retailer in Primm’s nearly 380,000-square-foot outlet mall initially debuted there around late 2021. The store closed last year, with signs on the doors saying it was being updated, and is now open for business again.
It held a grand opening on June 14.
Samantha Jo Julian, Sanithrift’s marketing director, told the Las Vegas Review-Journal that the 30,000-square-foot store is an “unexpected gem in the desert — a roadside star and a place of discovery.”
She said its stores are clean and organized; the clothing is sanitized to feel “fresh and ready to wear”; and the store design is a “little love note to your senses.”
Shoppers enter Sanithrift from the parking lot. But the rest of Primm Mall, as the property is now known, is closed.
Entrances to the mall are locked. Even the roll-down gate inside Sanithrift — a security barrier that’s normally in use when a store is closed — was down during business hours, preventing shoppers from entering the corridors of the ghost-town retail hub around it.
The outlet mall in Primm went into foreclosure several years ago and was then operated by a company that, according to court records, fell behind on its ground-lease payments. The investors who own the land underneath the mall now run the property.
Records show this group includes members of the town’s namesake Primm family.
The family remains “very bullish” on the town overall and its long-term prospects for success, said Cory Clemetson, president of the Primm entities that own the real estate in the area, in a written statement.
He cited its unique location and the increased possibility that the long-planned Ivanpah airport south of Las Vegas may eventually get built.
As for the future of the mall, “we’re keeping all of our potential options open right now,” Clemetson said.
More competition
Formerly known as Prizm Outlets and, before that, Fashion Outlets of Las Vegas, the mall is attached to Primm Valley Resort and used to be a busy place.
It opened in 1998 to a crowd of around 10,000 people and was 85 percent leased. In 2007, it was 99 percent leased and among the top 10 outlet centers nationally by sales. As recently as 2015, it was still about 92 percent occupied, according to published accounts.
The mall is positioned to intercept tourists and others driving between Southern Nevada and Southern California on I-15, a heavily traveled route. But in Las Vegas, competition for shoppers has only increased over the years, with numerous malls and other retail hubs now lining the tourist-choked Strip.
There are also two outlet malls — one downtown, the other south of the Strip — that are operated by retail giant Simon Property Group and draw tourists and locals alike.
In 2015, Simon opened a 25-store expansion of the downtown location, Las Vegas North Premium Outlets, saying it was now one of the largest such centers in the nation with 175 shops.
The landlord also said the mall was fully leased.
“Today’s expansion takes an already fabulous property to even greater heights,” a Simon executive said at the time.
Downward spiral
Eventually, financial issues started brewing at the mall in Primm.
After waves of tenants moved out, lenders foreclosed on the mall in 2018. It was about 66 percent occupied at the time and had “significant deferred maintenance throughout the property,” mortgage-research firm Trepp previously reported.
Kohan Retail Investment Group eventually bought the mall for just $400,000 in 2021, after it was appraised at $125 million in 2012, court records show.
By 2022, only a handful of retailers were left. The fountains where people could toss coins for charity were bone dry, and the food court was closed.
The mall’s landowners filed a lawsuit in Clark County District Court in 2022, alleging a Kohan-controlled entity owed more than $170,000 in past-due rent, interest and fees in connection with its ground lease, court records show.
The landowners sought possession of the property and a court order terminating the lease.
District Judge Adriana Escobar awarded the landowners nearly $13 million in 2023.
Clemetson, president of the ownership group, had testified they were owed more than $12 million in future rent and other charges for the balance of the lease, as well as more than $820,000 in unpaid rent or other charges, court records show.
His testimony that day was “unrefuted,” according to Escobar’s ruling.
Don Polednak, an attorney for the landowners, told the Review-Journal that Kohan Retail no longer operates the mall, adding the firm was stripped of possession of the ground lease.
Kohan Retail did not respond to requests for comment.
‘It’s sad’
Miramontes, the recent shopper at Sanithrift, is a longtime Las Vegas resident. She recently went to Primm to buy lottery tickets at The Lotto Store, just over the state line in California, and stopped in the thrift shop after seeing something about it on TV.
She used to visit the outlet mall about five times a month, but until recently, she hadn’t been there for several years, she said.
During that last visit, the mall was just starting to go downhill, she recalled.
Jerry Aquino of Las Vegas recently stopped in Sanithrift on a drive to Laguna Beach, California, with his partner. They enjoy going to thrift shops and wanted to see the store in Primm on their way out of town.
Aquino used to visit the mall often — he was especially fond of its Williams Sonoma outlet — but hadn’t been there in years.
Even back then, he recalled, the mall was pretty dead.
Asked how he felt to see only one store left, he said: “It’s sad.”
Contact Eli Segall at esegall@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0342.
