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Wall Street Nevada, wants to build a 1 million-square-foot furniture showplace
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(Excerpt from Las Vegas Review Journal article by Chris Jones)
Is there room enough in downtown Las Vegas for a second major furniture market?
The backers of World View Plaza could soon find out.
Las Vegas-based Pierce Development and The Merrill Cos. of Woodland Hills, Calif., have jointly assembled nearly 8 contiguous acres on the south side of Charleston Boulevard just east of Interstate 15.
Their partnership, collectively known as Wall Street Nevada, wants to build a 1 million-square-foot furniture showplace on the southern half of its land. The proposed 13-story tower would complement two high-rise condominium towers recently approved for the site's northern half.
World View Plaza's combined developments would cost approximately $700 million, Craig Katchen, Pierce Development's chief executive officer, said this week.
"We're steaming ahead," Katchen said.
Workers will break ground on the condo towers next week. Wall Street Nevada has "quite a bit of cash," Katchen said, though it has not raised all of the money required to build the furniture market.
If constructed, World View Plaza would be the first local competitor for World Market Center, a $2 billion furniture showcase located a mile or so north near the I-15-U.S. Highway 95 interchange.
Los Angeles businessmen Jack Kashani and Shawn Samson, in partnership with The Related Cos. of New York, opened World Market Center's $200 million, 1.3 million-square-foot first phase last July. It hosts biannual furniture shows that draw exhibitors from around the world.
Proponents hope World Market Center will enable Las Vegas to become the nation's top furniture showplace, a distinction enjoyed for nearly a century by High Point, N.C. Early returns suggest the local market is a hit thanks to its new, centralized campus and this city's world-class hospitality industry.
Wall Street Nevada is interviewing brokers who are familiar with furniture manufacturers who exhibit in North Carolina; it hopes to persuade some to also show their wares at World View Plaza.
"It's kind of a 'High Point West,'" Katchen said. "People who didn't get in on World Market Center would have an opportunity with us.
"People we've talked to in High Point feel that there's room for another spot. We're only doing 1 million square feet vs. World Market Center's 12 million square feet, but we're giving people a choice."
World Market Center's second tower will add 2 million square feet early next year. By 2012, developers plan to build six additional buildings, raising the 57-acre campus's permanent exhibition space to approximately 12 million square feet.
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