Until The Legends at Sparks Marina, RED Development had kept its shopping centers, or "lifestyle centers" as the company prefers to call them, fairly close to the company's home bases of Scottsdale, Ariz., and Kansas City, Mo. When looking for a location for its latest destination development, RED saw an opportunity in Sparks it hadn't previously seen.
"Sparks had a really unique combination in that it was driven primarily by tourism, and the entertainment was focused on casino-driven stuff," says Dave Claflin, vice president of marketing for RED Development. "Where it was a little lacking was the family side of things. We saw a nice potential to combine the unique retail outlet with company store retail with really unique entertainment and dining options."
Creating unique retail outlets is what RED has been doing since 1995. The company was started by a quartet of real estate brokers, two in Scottsdale, Ariz., and two in Kansas City, Mo. While shopping centers are the company's primary focus, it has also developed neighborhood grocery-anchored centers, along with other mixed-use developments. So far, RED has completed 20 shopping centers, with another four properties under construction and five more in development.
The Sparks property marks the second RED venture into destination development, the term RED uses for shopping centers that aim to serve as a tourism attraction, mixing retail, entertainment and dining into an outdoor setting that reflects its location in design and amenities. Its first, The Legends at Village West in Kansas City, Kan., opened in the spring of 2006. While the projects share similarities, such as the use of STAR bonds for financing and the lure of increased tourism, the Sparks location had some interesting challenges.
"Every project is a learning experience, and one of the things we pride ourselves on is no two projects are alike," Claflin says. "One of our challenges about the Sparks property was that one of the things we do to make (a property) unique is to put lots of money, time attention into the icons, artwork, statues and medallions. When we were in Kansas, everything Kansas was fair game, because we knew we'd only do one.
"In Sparks, when we were trying to find area legends, we found a lot of the famous people were from Vegas. We were very sensitive to finding legends that were specific to northern Nevada."
Aside from not knowing about the North-South rivalry Nevada enjoys, Claflin was hard pressed to think of anything else that RED would have done differently during the development of the Sparks Legends.
"It's really overall been a pretty positive experience. We found the local leadership to have great vision and direction. (They've) been very positive to work with. They dove in and saw the potential with the project," he says.
Claflin's favorite story about the Sparks project came when he was in town last summer. While sitting in a restaurant at the Grand Sierra Resort, he overheard a couple next to him having a conversation about the not-yet-opened Scheels. The woman said to her companion, "Well that Scheels is supposed to open this fall." The man asked "What's a Scheels?" and the woman "started spouting more facts about Scheels than I could even, about the merchandise, what makes it unique, etc," Claflin recalls.
But the best part, one the City of Sparks was sure to like, was the man's final response: "Well, sounds like we will need to plan another trip," he said.
