Broadacres Marketplace

The line forms at the ticket gate. Gabriela Rodriguez described the walk past it in Las Vegas Weekly in 2024. The churros stand is on the right and the cowboy boot stand on the left, and the aisles carry a visitor toward the stage at the center of the grounds while the guitars and brass grow louder. She noted a faint smell of warm leather, roasted cacahuates and sweet cinnamon, mixed with the scent of the heavily cologned men standing by. Entrance is $3 on each of the three market days, and children under 54 inches come in free with a paying adult.

Broadacres Marketplace sits on more than 44 acres at the intersection of Las Vegas Boulevard and Pecos Boulevard in North Las Vegas, with 22 acres of paved parking that costs nothing. The entry run is called Main Street. It is faced by vendor rows and by advertising screens that sellers rent to steer shoppers to their spaces. Beyond it are more than 1,100 vendor spaces. Some stand under a permanent covered structure, where each stall comes with a shed, an awning and electricity. A separate annex holds sellers who book the same space Friday, Saturday and Sunday. The market’s own list of goods runs to antiques, collectibles, toys, crafts, household appliances, tools, shoes and coconuts. Rodriguez added work wear, cleaning supplies and mattresses.

Some booths have grown into fixtures. Latino’s Rock began as a modest booth selling band T-shirts. By 2024 owner Sergio Octaviano and his wife, Monica, had expanded it to five aisles of shirts, patches, hats and bags, with tees starting at $18. Marina Hernandez runs her second glamour photography studio, Memori.ES702, on the grounds. “I used to come with my dad every week,” she told the Weekly. Fairground rides are spread around the property so that children are never far from the shopping: Ferris wheels, swinging giant boats, tea cup spinners, bumper cars and live pony rides.

Under the red roof

The Food Fair sits under a large red roof structure between the 4000 and 5000 rows. Its stands include Pupuseria El Cordero, Culichi Sushi, Gorditas El Fogón, La Botana Carnitas, Ruby’s Tacos, Carnitas El Cuñado, Bamboo Asian Grill, Crepe Express, Via Pizza, CocoTime, Frutas Locas, Raspados Las Vegas and Guerrero Azteca Tejuino. The market directs visitors to its street-style tacos, Sinaloa-style sopes and gorditas, Mexican-style sushi, and Zacatecas-style birria. For dessert there are aguas frescas, strawberries dipped in chocolate and funnel cakes. Tortas and huaraches serve anyone in a hurry.

At La Botana, co-owners Manuel Maldonado and Carlos Hernandez cook Michoacán-style carnitas. In 2024 a shareable pound came to $22 with rice, beans and tortillas, eaten in the shaded dining area. “What I like most about being here is the people,” Hernandez said. “They’re happy about the carnitas and tell us they’re the best—that’s what really makes us happy.”

Micheladas come from a bar across from the stage. Rodriguez wrote that young people meet over “michis” on Sunday mornings to cure the night before, then pick up crisp Pro Club shirts or freshly made cheesy machetes. Her own memories of the place are of a booth her mother and stepdad ran, selling discounted furniture. As a child she was coaxed out of bed with the promise of fresas con crema or hot champurrado.

Banda on Sunday afternoon

The stage books local Las Vegas bands every weekend, playing norteño, cumbias and big traditional banda. The posted calendar sets Friday sets from 6:00 to 10:00 p.m., Saturday sets from 11:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m., and Sunday music from 11:00 a.m. into the late afternoon. La Tradicional De Mexico was billed for Sunday, October 4, 2026. Three bands were billed for October 11: Banda Maguey, Banda Los Montoya de Guamuchil and Explosiva Banda Rancho Nuevo. Banda Zacatecana De Tony Flores was on the calendar for October 18 and again for December 6.

Mid-September brings Fiestas Patrias, the Mexican independence celebration. In 2026, Los Kalentanos, Los Tiranos del Norte, Los Cadetes de Linares and Las Voces del Rancho played on September 13. On September 20, Miguel y Sus Kompaz and Ruleta Norteña opened for La Original Banda El Limón de Salvador Lizárraga, which went on at 5 p.m. for two hours. A week later a Súper Domingo brought Los Yonic’s Zamacona, Los Caminantes and Los Metichones Band. The market’s post afterward noted that Agustín Ramírez of Los Caminantes was gone but that the crowd was still singing his hits.

Each year a Special Events season keeps the grounds open into the night, so concertgoers can shop on Saturday evenings. VIP tables are sold at the stage. The market’s page recalls an October 29, year not given, when Ramón Ayala, “The King of the Accordion,” played at what the market says was a third of the price he would have cost elsewhere. Rodriguez described troupes of couples dancing banda and younger people on the Friday night dance floor, elbow to elbow with people who had come for years.

General manager Yovana Alonso has watched the crowd change. “Back in the day, [Broadacres] catered to first-generation Latinos,” she told the Weekly. “It’s no longer just first generation Hispanics; there’s now differing ethnicities.”

Dolph Bowman’s produce stand

Before Broadacres, according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal, the tract was a trailer park. The man who changed it was Dolph K. Bowman Sr., born November 20, 1924, in St. George, Utah. His obituary says he served in the Army overseas in World War II, ranched in Washington, and came to Las Vegas in 1954. There he started B&M auction on Nellis Boulevard, which the obituary calls the city’s first public auction. He also ran a vending company with jukeboxes and slot machines, and Bowman’s Riding Stables on West Oakey Boulevard, where Wayne Newton came to ride. Later he opened Family Farms Produce on West Spring Mountain Road. He sold that produce at the old drive-in swap meet, and the obituary says the produce business gave him the idea of starting his own.

Broadacres Swap Meet opened in 1977 on four acres. The Review-Journal says the Bowmans were vendors themselves who had never run a business, and that they kept buying land until the market reached 20 acres. When Bowman died in Las Vegas on February 2, 2004, his obituary called Broadacres “Nevada’s oldest, largest and most successful swap meet.” It was still owned by his family.

The Danz years and the stage

The Bowmans sold to Greg Danz and his father, Tad, in October 2007. Tad Danz ran swap meets in California. The Review-Journal dates the new name, Broadacres Marketplace, to the sale. A 2011 Las Vegas Business Press account instead places a renaming to Broadacres Marketplace & Event Center in May of that year. “I don’t really like the word ‘swap meet,’” Greg Danz said then.

Danz studied the traffic and saw shoppers buy and leave. He told the Review-Journal in 2019 that they spent less than 30 minutes on the grounds. The 2011 account quotes him at about 45 minutes. The Danzes bought 2.3 adjacent acres in 2009, bringing the market to just under 45 acres. The Review-Journal says they also razed a nearby apartment complex. They rearranged the booths, built a permanent snack bar, added restrooms and parking, and opened a stage in December beside a new beer bar. Lights let the market stay open until 11 on Friday nights.

By May 2011, bands were playing three one-hour sets on Saturdays and Sundays for $1,000 to $3,000. Danz built them a green room with a buffet. “We want them to want to play here,” he said. He tried tribute acts, with Van Halen and Metallica tributes on that month’s bill, but norteño and banda drew the crowds. “That’s what changed everything,” Alonso said. Entrance in 2011 was 50 cents on Friday, $1 on Saturday and $1.50 on Sunday. Danz counted 15,000 to 20,000 people on a Sunday.

Vendors disagreed about the change. Imelda Navarrete had sold flags and Avon products there for 19 years while working as a slot floor attendant. “It pays the utility bills,” she said. “A lot of families are depending on it to survive.” George Moen, who sold hand tools, liked the new lot: “Before they’d pull in, the lot was full, and they’d drive away.” Marcia Hill disagreed: “When (Danz) plays music the aisles are empty. The only one it’s helping is him.”

Alonso had started in 1993, at 15, helping at her aunt’s stand. She was a reservationist thinking of quitting when the Danzes arrived. “I would have left, but I saw the changes happening and thought, ‘this could be a good thing,’” she said. By 2019 Danz estimated that a visit lasted two hours. He has put the investment by his firm, Newport Diversified, at more than $40 million. “Back in the day, my father hated shopping, so he’d bring his list, rush and get out of here,” Alonso said. “Now you bring him, he’s here all day.”

The gates shut in June 2025

According to two longtime vendors, the market had closed only once for an extended stretch, for a few months during the 2020 pandemic. Then, on June 21, 2025, management closed it again. An Immigration and Customs Enforcement raid at a similar outdoor market in California had alarmed the immigrant community, and managers said they did not want Broadacres to be the site of arrests. Paola Navarro of Mariscocos El Jefe recalled the long, slow return afterward: “Maybe we would see one or two, three people walking by at most.”

Broadacres reopened on Friday, August 1, 2025, in triple-digit heat, with entrance cut to $2. Digital signs carried information from the ACLU of Nevada, which offered Know Your Rights training to vendors and shoppers. David Martinez and Malorie Davis, lifelong customers, were among the first dozen in line, and they ordered the first micheladas from the bar across from the stage. Martinez called it “a historic moment.” Alfonso Bernal of Gorditas El Fogón reopened one of his family’s two stands. “We are people who work, we are useful, we produce,” he said.

By June 2026, a FIFA World Cup watch party had packed the walkways again. “I think everybody is comfortable, the guests, the vendors, even my own staff,” Alonso said. “I think we all feel like we are almost back to that normal stage.”