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In potentially a sign of confidence in Las Vegas, Fry’s Electronics Inc. has purchased a location for another store here.
The retailer based in San Jose, Calif., already operates at 6845 South Las Vegas Blvd., near the Las Vegas Beltway.
Now, records show, Fry’s has purchased the vacant Great Indoors site at Boca Fashion Village.
The 20.4-acre Boca Fashion Village is at 700-750 S. Rampart Blvd., north of Charleston Boulevard.
It’s part of the 55-acre Shops at Boca Park center at Charleston and Rampart boulevards, just south of the new Tivoli Village mixed-use center.
This area is attractive to retailers, being just east of the affluent Summerlin planned community.
In a late-August bankruptcy court filing, the owner of Boca Fashion Village said that under plans approved by the bankruptcy court, Fry’s had purchased the Great Indoors site on June 15.
Records show Fry’s had agreed to buy the site for $4.66 million, or more than $1.2 million per acre; plus pay another $5 million to Sears, Roebuck and Co., owner of Great Indoors, for the vacant Great Indoors building.
In addition, Fry’s planned to invest another $3 million to $5 million to retrofit the building for use as a Fry’s store.
The building is 398 feet long and has 140,000 square feet – it’s so big that just a handful of retailers have been interested in it and it wouldn’t have been practical to subdivide the building, Boca Fashion Village has said. Boca Park already has a Vons and a Target, along with numerous smaller retailers and restaurants.
A timetable for Fry’s opening a store at Boca Fashion Village has not been disclosed. A message was left with Fry’s.
"Yes, Fry’s is coming," James Grindstaff, an executive at Triple Five Nevada Development Corp., developer of the shopping center, said Monday.
But he said Fry’s has not yet disclosed a timetable for opening the store.
The deal is seen by Boca Fashion Village as crucial to it emerging from bankruptcy, as the shopping center had been hurt by the loss of the Great Indoors as well as the closure of Linens ‘n Things.
The Great Indoors closed its Boca Fashion Village store in December 2008 and Linens ‘n Things closed as well after that company filed for bankruptcy in November 2008.
"Because of the beneficial effect on Boca Fashion Village, the addition of Fry’s is a major step in the reorganization process," Boca Fashion Village said in its bankruptcy court brief last month.
Before the closing of the sale, the agent for Boca Fashion Village’s secured lenders – Bank of America -- had been unwilling to engage in negotiations on a consensual plan of reorganization, Boca Fashion Village said in its court filing.
But after receiving the net proceeds of the Fry’s land sale, more than $4.4 million, Bank of America has been negotiating with the shopping center owner, its filing said.
Charleston Associates LLC, owner of Boca Fashion Village, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization in June 2010 in Delaware. At the time, it listed assets of $92 million against liabilities of $65 million.