Posted on: March 12, 2024, 09:34h.
Last updated on: March 12, 2024, 10:05h.
The very last store open at the Primm Mall, 40 miles southwest of the Las Vegas Strip, is about to close. When national designer clothing chain Michael Kors shuts up shop there — on or around March 25, according to a source who asked not to be named — the once-thriving indoor shopping center will be left entirely abandoned and will most likely close to the public.
The Primm Mall opened as the Fashion Outlets of Las Vegas on July 16, 1998 near the California border in Primm, Nev. Nearly everyone traveling by car to Las Vegas on Interstate 15 from LA has seen it since.
However, in the past 15 years, very few of them have bothered stopping there anymore.
Mall Bets are Off
Developed at a cost of $75 million by TrizecHahn Corp. with Gordon Group Holdings, the 371,000 square-foot shopping center opened with high-end retailers Neiman Marcus and Polo, and 10 food court restaurants.
At first, business was slow. Though TrizecHahn had estimated 10-12 million annual visitors, only 1.5 million materialized. According to the Las Vegas Review-Journal, Bertolini’s Italian restaurant was sued for breach of contract by the mall’s original owners, when it evacuated its 6K square-foot space in the middle of the night in April 1999.
But by 2001, at least according to the R-J, the mall found its footing, leasing out most of its space and enjoying a high sales per square foot of $426.
That didn’t last, however. Due to competition from online retailers — as well as from the Las Vegas South Premium Outlets, a mall less than 3 miles from the Strip — tenant occupancy began dwindling in the 2010s.
In 2012, the Primm Mall took out a $73 million mortgage, along with a $32 million loan, from Brookfield Asset Management, which allowed Brookfield to foreclose and take ownership in 2016. Ownership was transferred to the mortgage holder, Rialto Capital Management, two years later.
As stores began closing without replacements, the mall’s operators did their best to cover up the vacancies with dazzling works of street-inspired art. But by early 2020, there was no covering up the fact that the mall — briefly and futilely renamed Prizm Outlets to attract young people — was only 66% occupied.
Long Island-based Kohan Retail Investment Group, headed by Michael Kohan, purchased the mall in 2021 for a song: just north of $1.5 million.
After the pandemic shutdown, only six or seven stores in the mall reopened. No food court restaurants did.
Though Michael Kors still lists its Primm store on its own website, the Primm Mall website doesn’t list a single tenant anymore. Even though its logo still advertises “shopping * art * dining,” only the mall’s “127 murals from artists around the world” are mentioned.
An employee at Michael Kors told Casino.org she did not know her store’s official closing date, referring all questions to a mall manager who did not return a message.
This referral — along with the obvious futility of paying to keep 371,000 feet of indoor retail space climate-controlled in the desert with no tenants — strongly suggests that the entire mall will close along with its last remaining store.
Casino.org asked Michael Kohan what his future plans were for the site, but he declined to comment for this story.
