SILVERTHORNE — Shopping 'til you're dropping just got a little easier.

The new owner of the Outlets at Silverthorne is tweaking plans for the Green Village with this thought in mind: encourage shoppers to walk between the outdoor mall’s various stores instead of relying on their vehicles.

In hopes of creating a more natural pedestrian connection with the shops across the street, like Pure Mountain Outlet, Nine West and Carter’s, the largest change planned is a 2,400-square-foot addition at the opposite end of the building that’s home to the Old Navy outlet and the Zumiez skate and snowboard store that opened last weekend. The new space will be specifically outfitted for a restaurant and will extend the building almost to Rainbow Drive.

“We’re trying to make it more obvious and more comfortable,” Proskow said.

The Outlet’s owners are still working on securing a tenant for the restaurant space, which if they succeed, would become the only food available in the Green Village.

“We would like to attract someone that is more sit-down oriented because we want to do the outside patio seating (and) inside seating, but we also want someone that, say during the lunchtime, can give business people a fairly quick lunch,” Outlets manager Rob Goodell said.

Other ideas included in Craig Realty Group’s recent application to the town of Silverthorne were to further enhance the buildings’ architectural elements and to ease traffic problems near Pure Mountain Outlet.

Across the street at Pure Mountain, the Outlets have worked with the store’s owners to install a drive-thru ski rental drop-off under an awning that was built in the building’s early days.

Right now, people pull into the store’s main entrance and pull over to the curb to return ski rentals instead of parking, which can sometimes cause back-up onto Rainbow Drive, Goodell said.

Other changes include the installation of more stone and cedar accents to add mountain character to the village. The end result of the Green Village will resemble the Blue Village located across Highway 9, which was fully renovated last year.

“Essentially the project is staying the way it is with a few points being taken to try to strengthen and make it look that much better than what we’d originally done,” said Outlets designer Marcel Proskow of Maxam Design International.

The Silverthorne Planning Commission approved the changes on Tuesday night. The town council is scheduled to review the application on Wednesday. If the council gives the Outlets the green light, Goodell said the hope is to have the Green Village completed before the first of the year.

The Southern California Craig Realty Group purchased the Outlets in November 2005 from TGS Real Estate Investment Trust, a Canadian company.



<i>Nicole Formosa can be reached at (970) 668-3998, ext. 13625, or at nformosa@summitdaily.com.</i>

Renovation could mean revenue SILVERTHORNE — Past renovation at the Outlets has led to a growth in sales. After its remodel was complete, the Blue Village quickly filled its vacancies, and by the end of 2005, the sales tax revenue culled from the new village soared by 100 percent from the year before, Outlets manager Rob Goodell said. The Outlets hope to see similar success in the Green Village once its makeover is complete. As of April, the village was already up 18 percent in sales tax collections year-to-date, which Goodell attributed to the opening of the Old Navy Outlet in February. Goodell said he expects the village’s six vacancies to be filled within 12 months. “We’ve had some very good interest from our leasing chain on more tenants in there and I wouldn’t be surprised if — we would like to work with the owner so that in the fall or early winter we’re back before you for better upgrades for Phase 1 (Red Village),” Goodell said. The Red Village, where The Gap and Eddie Bauer is located, has four vacancies. <i>— Nicole Formosa</i>