In the mid-1990s, Chinatown Plaza opened on Spring Mountain Road. Its mix of Asian American/Pacific Islander businesses proved an immediate hit, and it began to attract other AAPI businesses to the neighboring plazas lining what was, back then, a sleepy and predominantly industrial stretch of road. Nearly 30 years and one official proclamation later, Chinatown Plaza is at the heart of a booming Chinatown, one that reaches nearly all the way from I-15 to Rainbow Boulevard—which is both good news and bad.

“Chinatown grew big-time, but Spring Mountain Road did not,” says Catherine Francisco, president of the AAPI Chamber, a 501(c)6 organization dedicated to promoting collaboration, diversity and prosperity in Vegas’ AAPI business community. “The infrastructure did not meet the growth.”

Anyone who’s been to Chinatown recently knows what she means. Finding a nighttime parking spot at Chinatown Plaza—or at neighboring Shanghai Plaza, at The Center at Spring Mountain, or at most any other dining/retail plaza on Spring Mountain—ranges from difficult to near impossible. And taking a rideshare to Chinatown to access its businesses on foot—which is a common thing for tourists, who Francisco says account for some 50% of the district’s customer base—can be equally daunting; Spring Mountain is six lanes across in places, with narrow sidewalks and relatively few controlled intersections.

Fortunately, help is coming. Last spring, the Clark County Commission went public with a corridor redevelopment plan called Inspiring Spring Mountain.“There was an interest among the community to really bring some cohesion to the development that was happening organically [in Chinatown],” says Clark County Commissioner Justin Jones. He adds, for emphasis: “The community is the co-creator of the plan.”

Over a period of months, the commission has met with small business owners, property managers, community organizations, transit users, neighborhood residents and students from nearby Clark High School; conducted a blight study on the Spring Mountain corridor to ascertain if it met the threshold for redevelopment funds; and administered a public survey that drew nearly 800 respondents, who said that public safety, park space and an arts and culture center are a few of the areas they’d like to see addressed.

“Once we get the draft visioning plan, we will ask the public for feedback,” Jones says. “We will be at any and all events and meetings promoting our plan, so we get as much feedback as possible.”

Not surprisingly, infrastructure improvements are at the top of nearly everyone’s to-do list.

“Parking is definitely something that we’re trying to work on,” Jones says, noting that the county “doesn’t own much in the way of property” that could be used for a public garage like the one the City of Las Vegas intends to build in the Arts District. “It’s something that we could purchase with redevelopment dollars, and we’ve looked at that. But we think that it probably makes more sense for a public-private partnership … [If a property owner] is redeveloping their parcel, then it’s better for us to essentially pay for them to add additional levels to what they need for their own use than it is for the county to build its own parking garage.”

Walkability seems a more direct fix. Jones notes that one element of the redevelopment plan, a four-way intersection between Chinatown Plaza and Shanghai Plaza, is already planned for installation next year.

“If you’ve been out there on a Friday or Saturday, you know that people want to have their boba on one side of the street and get some dim sum on the other side, and they’ll go back and forth,” he says. “We want to make sure that people can do that in a safe way, but also provide better flow for the businesses that are there, for vehicle traffic. And we’ll continue with that public works process over the next two or three years, to make sidewalks wider and to add treescapes and pedestrian access along that corridor.”

The project will also incorporate better access for transit, though as with the rest of the Valley, it’s not immediately clear what form that will take. Jones says the County is in conversations with the RTC, and that the Boring Company has already purchased land in Chinatown for an extension of the Vegas Loop tunnel network that currently serves the Las Vegas Convention Center and Resorts World: “I can tell you from personal discussions that [Boring Company president] Steve Davis and his crew are big fans of Chinatown and love to eat there, so they have a vested interest in putting a station there.”

Another short-term fix is public safety. Francisco applauds the county’s effort in bringing Metro into the conversation to address Chinatown’s public safety issues. “I’m appreciative of Metro providing a specified unit [for Chinatown],” she says. “That has been a big issue lately, with a multitude of burglaries happening to our small businesses … [and tourists] can’t leave shopping bags inside their cars.”

“We’ve worked very closely with Metro,” Jones says. “They’ve dedicated a team over the last year to just working with the small business owners along the corridor to make sure that they understand all the resources that are available and securing their own locations. I think that’s been a really valuable partnership.”

These changes to Spring Mountain will manifest over several years, but at least one will appear immediately. In early 2025, a section of Spring Mountain Road—in addition to the parking lots for Chinatown Plaza and Shanghai Plaza—will be temporarily closed off for an expansion of the AAPI Chamber’s annual Lunar New Year celebration. It will feature not only the district’s celebrated cuisine, but a Miss Chinatown pageant, activations for anime enthusiasts, parade floats and more.

Francisco hopes that the festival will encourage locals to appreciate Vegas’ Chinatown in a new way: without the burden of their cars.

“I’m from San Francisco, so I’m familiar with walkability and enjoying Chinatown by just walking Chinatown,” she says.

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