Exploring The New Downtown of Las Vegas

Move over, other "Downtowns." Downtown Summerlin has officially opened and more shops and restaurants keep opening their doors during the first months of the new center's existence. When you have over 100,000 people living in Summerlin, it wasn't always a viable option for those residents to drive all the way out to Town Square, Downtown Vegas, or even The Strip when they're in need of some dining and retail therapy. Now that Downtown Summerlin has entered the market, Vegas residents in the Northwest area will have a new favorite 1.6 million-square-foot hangout.

Downtown Summerlin is pretty expansive as it includes about 90 stores and 32 restaurants, a movie theater, plus a brand new ice rink for patrons to enjoy through mid-January. Just recently, I spent a well-earned hour wandering around inside the new Sur La Table before hitting up CRAVE for some cocktails and sushi, so all-in-all it was an amazing first experience. I will say that I was expecting something more like Town Square and a centralized shopping center, but it was more like a few "real city" blocks that made me think back to Chicago's streets. Just newer, cleaner, and less congested sidewalks. You pull into the parking lot and there's a few standalone buildings with shops and restaurants, a short drive toward the movie theater, and a few blocks of the main shops in what I'll consider the center of Downtown Summerlin.

Even though the area is still ramping up energy and pending the opening of quite a few stores and restaurants, we're excited to see what Downtown Summerlin has in store for Vegas locals. We saw the same thing when Tivoli Village opened up; a few months of figuring out its identity, bringing in foot traffic, and hopefully some fun events and markets to populate their calendar. Only time will tell!