Mays: Retail vacancies running against trend

Sometimes the good stuff in a public meeting is kind of buried. Or maybe just mentioned as an aside. Such was the case with the annual report given to the city council by Deputy City Manager Michael Mays wearing his secondary hat as acting community development director.

In that capacity, Mays oversees pretty much anything that has to do with construction or development, be that residential, like Liberty Ridge, or commercial. If it has anything to do with zoning or a variance to existing city law, he has likely been involved.

After a review of current projects, the biggest of which is likely the complete overhaul of Title 11 of city code which was approved in a joint meeting of the city council and the planning commission in July of this year, Mays gave a rundown of other items such as number of building permits issued and new residential allotments, rarely more than 25% of what is allowed under the Growth Ordinance in any given year.

But then came a chart that didn’t look quite as positive.

“We do note that we’ve seen an increase in the retail vacancy rate within Boulder City compared to Las Vegas Valley,” Mays told the council. “As you can see with the chart, you’ve seen a decline with Las Vegas Valley where you’ve seen an uptick in Boulder City.”

It is not a small uptick and the trend is almost a mirror image of the story in the Las Vegas Valley.

“Over the hill,” retail vacancies shot up in 2021 as businesses failed in the wake of the pandemic. They hit a high of 7% and dropped rapidly the next year and the trend has continued downward,” he said. “There was a slight increase in 2025 fiscal year, but the retail vacancy rate is still just over 4%.

The story in Boulder City looked similar between 2021 and 2023 fiscal years with vacancies going above 4% in 2021 and then falling for the next two years to a low of 3% in 2023.

But then vacancies shot up in fiscal year 2024 to more than 7% and continued to rise in fiscal year 2025, which ended at the end of June. The final rate for 2025 was more than 8%.

Mayor Pro Tem Sherri Jorgensen, chairing the meeting in the absence of Mayor Joe Hardy, who was at a Nevada League of Cities and Municipalities meeting in Henderson — (see related story on this page) asked about the vacancy rate.

“I just know that a huge concern for us is our retail areas that are empty at this time. And I know that we’ve put forward some awesome efforts and kudos to the individuals in your office to be able to make the corridor more attractive, especially as we come into town,” she said. “What is it? Because we’re clearly not trending in the way that the valley is trending as far as retail space. What do you see or is there anything that you see that we could do that could help incentivize or do anything to help people come?”

The answer was about visitors, not residents.

“I think the more tourists that we can bring to the community, whether it’s through special events or we’re looking to the Southern Nevada Railroad Museum and the Chamber of Commerce’s Adventure Center. Those types of venues are going to draw a lot of people to our community,” Mays said. “They’re going to support our local businesses and that’s going to get the attention of other retailers, restaurants that will look to Boulder City to open a business. And so we want to foster those types of opportunities to encourage additional reinvestment.”

The second item of note was about Redevelopment Fund spending.

“We have about $500,000 plus in RDA funds dispersed and we have a pretty substantial balance there it ends in just a matter of a few years,” Councilman Steve Walton began. (The fund currently sits at more than $4 million and the RDA has until 2030 to spend the money or return it to other entities, largely the Clark County School District. The city would retain just 10% if that were to happen.)

“Council has that on our agenda for the strategic plan to consider how we could either internally come up with projects that can be applied to that or are there any coming down the line that we’re aware of that are helpful to our historic, our business or commercial districts to disperse some additional funds in the relatively near foreseeable future?” Walton continued.

Mays answer contained a bit of new info.

“Well, we’re going to continue to promote the grant programs to our local businesses,” he said. “But we’re also exploring the possibility of converting the Boulder Creek Pavilion into a permanent facility utilizing RDA funds.”

Mays called that an “internal staff idea.” Stay tuned.