The $250 million Terrace at Traverse Mountain will be built on 150 acres and include 1.2 million square feet of retail shops, restaurants and entertainment venues, said Richard Rozier, senior vice president of Mountain Home Development in Lehi. It will be anchored, in part, by the huge new Cabela's outdoor store that opened in August,

Mountain Home, in partnership with Cleveland, Ohio-based Forest City Enterprises, will develop the so-called lifestyle center modeled after Forest City's Victoria Gardens open-air shopping center in Rancho Cucamonga, Calif.

What makes the project distinct is that it will not be built in phases. "We aren't going to build 300,000 square feet and see how it goes - the whole 1.2 million will be built at the same time," Rozier said.

That is an astonishing pledge, said James Wood, director of the Bureau of Economic and Business Research.

"Nobody has ever developed that much retail space in Utah at one time," he said.

Rozier said no tenants have committed to the Utah project, which is scheduled to begin construction in early 2007 and open in 2008. He said the company has obtained all necessary permits and is now finalizing the project's design. The two companies will shortly begin trying to market the space to potential tenants.

"We anticipate that many of the same tenants that are in Victoria Gardens will be in the Terrace," he said.

Victoria Gardens has dozens of retailers, including anchors JCPenney, Macy's and Robinsons-May, and specialty retailers Abercrombie & Fitch, Banana Republic and Gap.

Rozier said he anticipates the Utah project also will attract a number of retailers not yet in Utah, such as the Apple Store, which sells Apple Computer Co. products and has a location in Victoria Gardens.

The Terrace at Traverse Mountain will be part of a larger Traverse Mountain project that is set to include 4 million square feet of retail and office space, as well as 8,000 residential units, a mix of condominiums and single-family homes. Five hundred single-family homes already have been built and an additional 1,500 lots have been sold to builders.

Even though the shopping center is in Utah county, developers envision that the mall will attract shoppers from throughout Utah and surrounding states.

Rozier said an estimated 4 million people a year from Utah and other states are expected to visit the Cabela's store.

Cabela's undoubtedly has become a strong draw in just a few short months. Taxable sales in Lehi, for example, shot up nearly 53 percent in August, compared with the same month last year, according to the Utah Tax Commission. The hefty increase can be linked to the mammoth store, which was open just seven days that month.

Mountain Home and Forest City will be developing a concept that The Boyer Co. already has proved can work in Utah, said Wood of the Bureau of Economic and Business Research. Unlike enclosed shopping centers that are heated in the winter and cooled in the summer, The Gateway is an open-air mall in which shoppers access stores from outdoor walkways. Opened in November 2001, The Gateway includes a mix of retail shops, restaurants, apartments, condo- minium and apartment units and entertainment venues.

Mountain Home and Forest City also picked a strong location for their development, Wood said.

"They are going to be in the heart of an area with the highest level of new residential construction in Utah," he said. "That's what they are banking on."

One potential roadblock to the project's success, though, is the competing amount of similar developments along the Wasatch Front, such as West Jordan's Jordan Landing, he said.

"With so many other competing developments, they have their work cut out for them."

John Owens, a land and retail broker with Commerce CRG in Salt Lake City, agrees. But he said with a developer such as Forest City signed on, it has a great chance of success.

"Forest City is a large, experienced company with an excellent reputation," he said.