Record-buying in Las Vegas will undergo a major shake-up in the coming months. The massive Virgin Megastore, located since 1997 in the Forum Shops at Caesars Palace, will close January 9, with plans to reopen at an undetermined time in an undetermined location. Meanwhile, Phoenix-based independent record-store chain Zia Records will most likely open its first non-Arizona location in Las Vegas some time next year.
With the closing of Downtown's venerable Odyssey Records earlier this year, a vacuum was created in the local music-buying scene, and it's going to get bigger before it's eventually filled. Details on Virgin's closing are scarce, but rumors have been floating for years that the company was not pleased with the store's location in an out-of-the-way corner of the Forum Shops. According to an official company statement, "Las Vegas is an appropriate market for Virgin Megastores; however the current location does not meet the company's needs." Spokeswoman Krysty O'Quinn Walker would add nothing other than to say that Virgin has definite plans to open a new megastore location in Las Vegas in the near future.
"The store itself is certainly a treasure to have in this town, and it's unfortunate to, at least temporarily, not have access to it," says Marco Brizuela, general manager of independent record store Big B's, about the closing of Virgin. Big B's, located on Maryland Parkway near UNLV, is the city's preeminent indie music retailer, far ahead of small, specialized stores like Balcony Lights and Hip-Hop Site, serving both mainstream and alternative tastes. Brizuela often refers customers to Virgin. Since Odyssey closed, Big B's has seen increased business in the hip-hop and R&B genres, and Brizuela predicts at least a small spike in sales when Virgin shuts down.
Zia, which has seven locations in the greater Phoenix area, is poised to challenge Big B's in the near future. Hoping to fill the void left by Odyssey (but not, as Vice President and General Manager Larry Rudnick notes, Virgin), Zia sees Vegas as a market ripe for its mix of indie sensibility and mainstream appeal. "We are looking at Las Vegas very seriously as an expansion opportunity for us," Rudnick says, although he can't say for certain when or where a store might open. For a while, Zia had been looking at the old Odyssey location, which has since been rented out to other businesses. It's likely that the store would open on the east side of town, not far from Big B's, Balcony Lights and Hip-Hop Site, giving Vegas a concentration of independent music retailers on one side of town.
With Vegas's reputation as a town lacking culture, and the overall downturn in the music retail business, it seems an odd time to be opening a large new non-chain record store in town, but Rudnick doesn't think so. "We think Vegas, certainly, is a growing market," he says, and Zia is a growing company, having just opened its seventh location. He notes that the music business is on a slight upswing after two and a half years of declining sales. While the parent company of Tower Records, the other major player in the Vegas record-store scene with its west side WOW! Superstore, declared bankruptcy in February, it's already emerged from proceedings and has no immediate plans to close any stores. For his part, Brizuela asserts that Big B's is also doing healthy business.
Brizuela is also happy to see Zia come to town, even with the potential overlap of Big B's clientele. Although it will be some time before a potential Zia store opens, and some time before Virgin finds a suitable new location, Brizuela sees the developments as good things. "I think this is the kind of change that down the road, it's going to take about a year or so from now for us to start seeing how it's shaping up, but if it looks like the way I'm thinking, things are going to actually be improved a year from now," he says. "I look at it as a complete win-win situation all around."