SAN ANTONIO EXPRESS-NEWS — November 18, 2005 -- Holiday shopping this weekend?

How 'bout a gondola ride to go with your bag of bargain swag?

Thirty new luxury stores and a wide array of free family activities — plus a little taste of Venice — mark this weekend's grand opening at San Marcos' Prime Outlets.

Today through Sunday, the discount mega-center will host an action-packed celebration, complete with gondolas ferrying shoppers up and down a new, man-made canal. The festivities mark the completion of a $50 million-dollar makeover and expansion at the 755,000-square foot outlet center.

Even before this expansion, Prime Outlets and the neighboring Tanger center made up the largest outlet-shopping complex on the planet. Now, just weeks after Prime Outlets opened a Neiman Marcus Last Call store, the center has added Lacoste Zegna, Hugo Boss, Salvatore Ferragamo, Calvin Klein, Michael Kors, bebe O and Tommy Bahama to its list of fashion retailers.

A 14,000-foot Restoration Hardware is also among the new Prime Outlets arrivals, along with new outlet stores for high-end luggage-maker Tumi, leather goods specialist Furla and more.

Festivities include special sales and family activities, with models and musicians throughout the open-air center and a full slate of entertainment in a special "event tent." Individual stores will also offer special activities, from face painting and children's arts and crafts at KB Toys to high fashion scarf-tying demonstrations at the new Ferragamo.

Designer Henry Roth, the "style judge" of E! Entertainment's Style Network, will be on hand Saturday afternoon to judge an extreme makeover contest sponsored by some of the outlet's retailers, says Prime Outlets marketing manager Lorie Kennedy.

A wine tasting this evening, weekend Italian cooking classes and seminars on traveling in Italy are among events planned to complement the expansion's Italian architectural theme.

Prime Outlets is one of Texas' top tourist attractions, ranking just below the Alamo, the River Walk and Six Flags Over Texas. That fact may have influenced executives at Baltimore-based Prime Retail, the center's owner, to add a 276-foot-long Venetian-style canal, complete with two gondolas, and a 137-foot-tall bell tower, modeled after Venice's landmark Torre dell'Orológico, to the center's discount shopping attractions. Gondola rides will be free during this grand-opening weekend, and $2.50 beginning Monday.

David Lichtenstein, chairman and principal of the Lightstone Group, owners of Prime Retail's worldwide holdings, says he chose the Venetian theme for the San Marcos center while vacationing in Venice, home of the world-famous Piazza San Marco.

San Marco to San Marcos may seem like a stretch. But in today's global market, it's just a gondola ride away.