NYT: Las Vegas builds 'the saddest shopping center on the planet'

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/12/magazine/sticker-shock-at-vegass-glitziest-mall.html?_r=1

Saturday night, Las Vegas. In this mecca of extreme retail, shops remain open as late as midnight, like fancy bodegas, because even a craving for Balenciaga ballet flats should have the option of satisfying itself on demand. While overall consumer spending still hasn’t recovered from the recession, there are signs that luxury spending may be on the rise. High-end retailers (Tiffany & Company, Hermès, Saks Inc.) have reported first-quarter gains. In America, analysts note, the wealthiest 2 percent of the population has been doing most of the buying. Where does this leave Las Vegas, purveyor of luxury for the masses?

... Crystals is the dark heart of CityCenter, the $8.5 billion, 67-acre resort and entertainment complex that has become a legendary symbol of prerecession hubris. Conceived of in 2004 by MGM Mirage, CityCenter was to be the largest privately financed construction project in American history, a conglomeration of hotels, restaurants, retail shops and condominiums. But it had the poor timing to open in December 2009, in the thick of the recession, in a city that has seen some of the highest unemployment and foreclosure rates in the nation. Many of its condos languish unfilled. Who needs one in a sea of cheap hotel rooms?

... Perhaps there’s something poignant about shopping anywhere right now, at this moment when the American consumer is so beleaguered. But Las Vegas — in its tendency to dilate every phenomenon to its supersize extreme — has produced the saddest shopping center on the planet. Crystals is the world’s most splendid ghost mall.

... Yet the lack of visible shoppers doesn’t necessarily mean that no one is buying. A recent article in Vegas Inc, a Las Vegas business magazine, argued that the purchasing of luxury goods no longer occurs out in the open: customers are apparently “shopping in stores’ private rooms while sipping chilled Champagne from elegant glass flutes, or having stacks of couture delivered to their hotel rooms high above the Strip, or sending their personal shoppers to the stores hours before the elegant retailers open.” As the retail consultant Pamela Joy Ring told Vegas Inc, “It’s more about what you’re not seeing in these malls than what you are.”

They're probably mad because in Vegas, people wear shorts to dinner.

This is nothing more than the repetition of an ignorant stereotype!

Anyway, to quote Willy Wonka, 'a little nonsense now and then is relished by the wisest men'.

In casino format

This was in 1999. I asked the managers if I could get fired if I didn't meet the sales quota and I never got an answer.
The problem was a lack of traffic. People did not buy anything until the coupon sales were in the paper. If they had told me I could have been fired, I would have asked them if they were taking into account the lack of traffic when sale prices were not in effect.

I remembered one woman came in and bought an $800 watch that was a Gucci or something. Went through all this rigamarole to buy it, and then she brought it back a couple of days later.

Working in retail will drive ya nuts. :banghead:

to a party to impress people. Which reminds me, I have a high school reunion to go this summer, does anyone know what the return policy on Rolex watches is?

She would buy an outrageous expensive outfit to go to an event and then return it the next day.

A city in the middle of a fucking DESERT based on vice and base materialism. In the middle of the DESERT, but yet it has numerous gigantic fountains in front of its hovels of vice, er, I mean casinos.

Disgusting.

It is a symbol of MOST everything that is wrong with the good ole USA.

First of all, the definition of 'vice' has been weakened substantially to fit in the maniacal defense of Weiner. Second of all, Las Vegas, like Phoenix, has a lot of groundwater.

Thirdly, every single hotel/casino there is run using union labor, and if you've never seen City Center, you would be awed at the amount of labor that went into building the place. That construction project employed THOUSANDS for YEARS.

That money would have otherwise sat on a balance sheet somewhere. Instead, it got put to work.

So find something else to feel superior about.

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http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=439&topic_id=1284170&mesg_id=1284408

Pot, meet Kettle.

I guess I missed out on that cultural norm: I shake hands. (Although I will never shake hands with Weiner unless he washes his first, what with all that dick-handling he does).

But, whatever.

I was in Vegas once, and some guy cut me off in traffic. Jesus, that guy was a dick.


There, I got "Jesus" and "dick" in this post, too.

:shrug: :rofl:

For zero dollars of profit annually. One of the more grotesque misallocations of capital out there.

I am not an anti-Vegas scold, but these projects were terrible ideas. Stardust could still be throwing off cash for Boyd (and thousands would be working there every day for years to come), but the need to do something, ANYTHING, with all that easy pre-crash capital, was too great. In that way, Vegas, and City Center, are poster children for our suddenly over-the-hill economy.

And the projects employed people.

Gambling = taking advantage of people's ignorance of statistics.

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Still, I saw the Grateful Dead play there once many years ago, and it was probably one of the most fun times of my life.

Glad I got out at the right time though. It's going to be real painful there until it adjusts to what the valley can reasonably hold, say 250,000 people. That's right, 90% of them are going to have to go.

It was not inexpensive signage, to say the least.

Sounds interesting.

A good wayfinding design program delivers information in a concise manner using a format that is harmonious with the overall design theme of a given project. One of my duties is to design wayfinding and environmental design themes that communicate well, look great, and aren't needlessly expensive.

The Crystals project was definitely one of the more elaborate (and costly) projects I have worked on.

It's interesting to think that real people design those kinds of signs. Somehow they just seem to be there, but I'm sure that a great amount of work goes into them. :hi:

in Vegas.

VIDEO of Depp doing HST: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pQsYwZH2JeY