7 new stores at The Shoppes at Sands

By Lynn Olanoff | The Express-Times 

Sands Casino Resort Bethlehem announced plans for seven new outlet stores and a new Asian restaurant at today’s grand opening for its Shoppes at Sands.

The new stores — Van Heusen, Bass, Izod, Tommy Hilfiger, Dressbarn, Under Armour and Art of Bread by Georges Perrier — will open this spring. The new Asian restaurant will open in the casino over the summer, officials said.

The nine-store outlet mall this month added five stores — Chico’s, Coach Factory, Corningware, Corelle and More, Hartstrings Children’s Clothing Boutique and Peeps & Company. In addition to the seven stores announced today, another 10 are expected to open by year’s end, bringing the total to 31, Sands Bethlehem President Robert DeSalvio said.

“We’re in the business of building traffic,” Las Vegas Sands President and Chief Operating Officer Michael Leven said while in town for the grand opening. “You have to give people things to do. … Whether you play or not is not relevant.”

Depending on the mall’s success, Las Vegas Sands may seek to expand it, Leven said, pointing toward a vacant building across the street. He said a mall expansion is more likely than a hotel expansion, previously proposed by Las Vegas Sands Chairman and CEO Sheldon Adelson.

“I think we’re far off from another hotel tower,” Leven said today. “I think there’s a lot more development we can do that’s more appropriate for the site.”

Sands opened its 302-room hotel Memorial Day weekend, and in the last three months of the year the hotel averaged a 54.5 percent occupancy rate. Leven said he believes the hotel will average a 70 percent occupancy rate in 2012.

Today’s grand opening featured a fundraising fashion show for the Bethlehem Area Public Library’s Room to Grow expansion project.

The show raised between $20,000 and $30,000 for the project, which will expand the children’s and teens’ sections at both the library’s main and South Side branches, library Executive Director Janet Fricker said. The money raised tonight will go toward the $400,000 renovation of the South Side branch, for which the library also just received a $150,000 grant from an anonymous foundation, she said.

The library hopes to raise another $150,000 in the next six months so the South Side work can be completed this fall, Fricker said.

“We’re hoping everybody sees how fabulous it looks and rushes to give us contributions to finish the project,” she said.

The library has completed about $1 million worth of work so far at the main library but has to raise another approximate $800,000 to finish the entire $2.5 million Room to Grow project, Fricker said.