Las Vegas and Apple Stores

Much to my surprise, Las Vegas was recently ranked #2 in the nation when it comes to tech savvy. I’m somewhat skeptical of the numbers, but I can see why Las Vegas could hold up such a rank…

As it turns out there is a lot of technology here in Las Vegas. And no, its not the stuff you see on CSI. CES leads the way every January with the latest in digital gadgets. From there we have the casinos – and the massive customer information and surveillance systems outside of the government. Finally, we were an early market to get an HD station (KLAS) and they even have their own HD traffic copter.

So when it comes Las Vegas being high-tech, why not have more Apple stores than just about any other city in the US? We’re not far behind. We have two right now, and according ifoAppleStore, there are at least two more Apple stores set to open in the next year and a half, with a prospective third new store (the first one off the strip) coming in this time frame well.

The first Apple store built in LV is a cramped store in the Fashion Show Mall. The benefits to this Apple Store is that its indoors – so when I stood in line for 9 hours last year for my iPhone, I waited in an air conditioned space. It attracts a ton of tourist traffic, since it is located at the intersection of the Strip and Spring Mtn, across from the Wynn, Venetian/Pallazo, and the TI/Mirage. The second store is a moderately more spacious and slightly less trafficed store at the Town Square shopping center. This is an outdoor mall, so waiting for the iPhone here wont be nearly as fun. Its further away from the strip and gets less tourist traffic but is also located fairly close to a Frys, oddly enough.

The two new rumored stores are also located on the strip (as are the two existing stores). The first locale is the Forum Shoppes at Caesars, which should open in late 2008 or early 2009. Whats interesting to note is that this store will be less than one mile from the Fashion Show Mall store (approximately 3/4 of a mile). One interesting thing about this store is that the walkways in the Forum Shoppes are very narrow – waiting in line here for a product release will be very chaotic since there isn’t a whole lot of space to put people.

The next store will be in late 2009 when the new City Center project opens up – located between the Bellagio and the Monte Carlo – and this store is rumored to be a huge 20,000 sq ft store located directly on the Las Vegas Strip, in what is probably the most high trafficked areas in the resort corridor. It will be on par with the new Boston store and could get Flagship status.

Finally, the last and most uncertain rumor is a location for the Apple store inside the just underway Summerlin Centre, located south of the Red Rock Casino at the 215 and Charleston (my side of town, yeah!).  This rumor is actually closer to idle speculation and 3rd hand hearsay than anything more specific, but it does make sense, since this will be a very high traffic area in terms of visitors, and summerlin lacks a large scale mall – we have to go to the Fashion Show or Town Square, both of which are 30 mile round trips from the proposed mall location. The closest thing after those malls is Boca Park, which is just a huge, multisegment strip mall that sort-of competes in that space, but is also home to a grocery store, a Target, and an office supply store. And its also hell to get in and out of because of traffic. Summerlin Centre will have several access routes – 215 frontage roads, Summerline Centre Drive, Hughes Park Dr, Pavilion Center, Sahara, etc.