Performer Nik Wallenda walked a 700-foot high wire and Connecticut Governor Dannel P. Malloy was on hand to help open Tanger Factory Outlet Centers at Foxwoods Resort Casino in eastern Connecticut last week. The move is seen by analysts as an attempt by the Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation, Foxwoods owners, to prepare for new casino competition in Massachusetts. Gordon Group also developed the Shops at Mohegan Sun at Connecticut’s other casino resort.
The Mashantucket Pequot tribe developed the retail center in partnership with Gordon Group of Greenwich, Connecticut. A Tanger Factory Outlet Centers spokesman said the Foxwoods location will be first enclosed center out of the many it operates throughout the U.S. “Sheldon Gorden worked with the tribe to develop the innovative idea of connecting two casino floors and two high-rise resort hotels. It had really never been done before, so it was his creative idea. He developed the Forum Shops at Caesar’s Resort in Las Vegas and it’s one of the highest-volume retail locations in the country.”
Matt Armstrong, executive vice president of Gordon Group, said, “Sheldon was the first guy to prove that casino and retail together is a very synergistic idea in that the retail lifts gaming traffic and the gaming lifts the retail. There was the concern that if you put retail next to a casino that the retail would siphon all of the dollars. In fact, the opposite happens. The retail actually lifts the casino spending. If you go down the Las Vegas strip today, there isn’t a single casino that doesn’t have some kind of a large retail component.”
Armstrong said the Tanger center architecture fits in with the overall look of the resort. “The thing that makes it really exciting is that it is literally right in front of the resort, so it will be the first thing that you see as you arrive. The idea was to connect two of the largest casinos in the property, the Fox Towers Casino and the Grand Pequot Casino, with a more interesting experience than exists today.”
