While the new neighborhoods get modern supermarkets, 24-hour drug stores, trendy restaurants and "big box" retailers, mature neighborhoods are often left with out-of-date shopping centers-some built as far back as the 1960s.

Chuck Creigh, president of the retail brokerage firm, NewMarket Advisors noted, "Most of the retail development in the valley has been focused on the new master planned areas. But with a retail vacancy rate of only 4.3% in the valley, there are opportunities for retail redevelopment in the established older neighborhoods."

One local developer, Laurich Properties, is seizing the opportunity to developing shopping centers in older neighborhoods. Today, Laurich Properties is developing unincorporated Clark County's first shopping center redevelopment project known as Sahara Square Shopping Center at the southwest corner of Maryland Parkway and East Sahara Avenue. This redevelopment will replace a center that was originally built in 1967.

"The old Sahara Square was blessed with a fantastic location, but before we started the redevelopment it didn't have an anchor to attract shoppers, and it became obsolete," said Hank Gordon, president of Laurich Properties. "This summer, the new modern Lucky and Sav-on stores will attract shoppers from miles around, for years to come."

When the $21-million redevelopment project is completed later this summer, the new Sahara Square will have 95,200 square feet of gross leasable area, including a modern 57,700 square-foot Lucky Market, a 15,500 square-foot Sav-on drugstore with a drive-through prescription pick-up window, and 24,000 square feet of other shops, together with a new Chevron/McDonald's on the corner.

One impediment to redevelopment in mature neighborhoods is the lack of large enough parcels to that modern shopping centers require. So naturally, retail development in these areas is much more difficult than in newer neighborhoods where new shopping centers are usually vacant desert before development.

At Sahara Square, Gordon was fortunate to have partnered with property owners Ken Sullivan Jr. and Irwin Molasky, the developer of the luxury high-rise condominiums Park Towers at Hughes Center, to redevelop the shopping center. "However, this would have been a lot easier to develop if Clark County had a Redevelopment Agency like the other city governments in the valley have."

Gordon would like to redevelop other retail centers near Sahara Square in the future, but this will be difficult without the powers of eminent domain that a County Redevelopment Agency would have. "I would like to redevelop the Commercial Center to the west of Sahara Square and replace it with a new modern shopping center containing large national retailers, many of which cannot find locations within the inner city since there are no large parcels of land left."

Added Gordon, "People are often afraid of change, but redevelopment brings many benefits to the community such as the elimination of blight, exciting new stores and the availability of new goods and services in areas which do not presently have them, as well as significant tax benefits."

With more than 40 years of experience in real estate development, Gordon has been personally involved in numerous retail developments in mature areas of other communities that have successfully converted these blighted areas into new productive parts of the community.

Locally, Gordon teamed up three years ago with Irwin Molasky to develop Best on the Boulevard shopping center. Located at Maryland Parkway and Katie Avenue, just south of the Boulevard Mall, this retail center has brought 200,000 additional square feet of new "big box" national retailers that you would traditionally find at a highway interchange.

"You rarely see a new retail development of this size in a mature neighborhood. Again, it is usually too difficult to assemble a large enough parcel. But thanks to Mr. Molasky, local residents can easily shop at stores like Best Buy, Copeland's Sports, Cost Plus, Petco and Jo-Ann etc without having to drive to Sunset Road or Rainbow and Lake Mead."

Retail broker Creigh added, "Developers are faced with the challenge of providing the right retail services to the people that live in mature neighborhoods and this has created the opportunity for new retail development."

Indeed, in the past year Laurich Properties has built also brought new free-standing drug stores to mature neighborhoods. "Why should Summerlin and Green Valley get all of the new Rite Aid, Sav-on and Walgreen's drug stores?" said Gordon.

Seeing a need in an older neighborhood, Gordon demolished the Regency Car Wash and in its place developed the closest national drug store to Sunrise Hospital and the adjacent medial offices. This Rite Aid drugstore at Vegas Valley Drive and Maryland Parkway is open 24-hours a day, seven days a week, and has a drive through prescription window. Gordon is also currently developing another Rite Aid at the corner of Flamingo Road and Spencer Street.

Still further south on Maryland, Gordon completed a retail redevelopment project last year that brought a new 5,000 square-foot Blockbuster Video store to the neighborhood near UNLV at Maryland Parkway and Flamingo Road, replacing an old El Pollo Loco restaurant.

Before he brought Blockbuster to the neighborhood, Gordon was amazed by the lack of video stores near the campus. "It was crazy. You have a giant university with tens of thousands of students and you think someone would have built a decent, full-service video store."

In the end, Gordon sees a positive future for the valley's mature neighborhoods with retail development leading the way.

"I wouldn't call this recent development a renaissance yet, but I think that some of the things we are doing and things that are going on in other areas, like Neonopolis are going a long way to improving the quality of life in the valley's more mature neighborhoods," said Gordon. "With all of this redevelopment, I don't know who I'm making happier, the demolition contractors or the people who live in the vicinity of our new redevelopments."