About 35 miles south of Las Vegas on I-15 at the California border is a place called Primm, also known as State Line to longer term residents. In 1998 they opened a large outlet mall, and it was pretty popular for a while. Buses used to come in from California bringing people from Victorville, Barstow and Baker. The mall is attached to Whiskey Pete's casino, so there was that, too.
However, time moves on and somebody opened an outlet mall at Barstow, then a big outlet shopping center opened in central Las Vegas. I'm pretty sure those events severely dented business at Primm, but we always visited after getting our lottery tickets at the lottery store just over the CA border. Slowly, the number of stores, food vendors, and customers started to thin. Then came Amazon, Etsy, Wayfair, COVID, and higher gas prices.
We went down to get tickets on Monday and went into the mall. There are just two stores left, a thrift store and a Michael Kors outlet. Turns out the latter will close on 23 March. It is a little bit eerie walking around in there. You can easily imagine all kinds of stalk and slash alien type movies being made in there with the right lighting. I took a few pictures to show the last gasps of this place, about to become another monument to the decline of the retail business. RIP.
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The south entrance.
An empty corridor with empty stores.
The empty food court.
There are hoardings over many of the empty shops with some wonderful art.
Nothing says decline and abandonment quite like fake flamingos in an empty fountain.
