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Official HQ is Cincy because of legacy of Federated, but upper management is all at 151 W. 34 in Manhattan. |
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You really think that Macys shuts down company-owned stores on factors other than sales? Macys has more downtown stores than every other department store chain in the U.S. combined. They're putting a half-billion into the 34th Street store, and 100 million into the Downtown Brooklyn store. They're building a big new Bronx store. They maintain big downtown stores all over the country, from SF, to Chicago, to Boston. They're easily the most pro-downtown major retailer in the U.S. Have you been to downtown Miami? There's practically no retail there, and what exists is crap. Yet Macys still soldiers on. This is true in quite a few downtowns throughout the country, decades after the other department stores left for the burbs. |
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They probably didn't think that a single downtown could maintain two nearby flagship stores for the same retailer (which sounds reasonable to me), so closed one of them. That doesn't sound like some anti-downtown agenda. |
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The edge of a downtown can be a good spot for a second retail core if it can draw heavily from the nearest couple hundred thousand residents (who would mostly drive there in this scenario). And a good range of events (conventions, games) can help the restaurant component. But big events can also scare off a lot of those residents due to traffic. For any retail area it's important to become a "habit" or "default" for a lot of people, and stuff like game traffic can interrupt that. The neighborhood is obviously gaining some residents and hotels, but the numbers aren't high enough. Add another few thousand hotel rooms within an easy walk and that'll be a big component. The resident count is drops in the bucket...build another few thousand units and you'll have better groceries and takeout, but it even dozens of towers wouldn't be a serious factor for a Macy's. A caveat...if you did add a lot of residents (say 5,000 units within 1/3 mile), you might create the sort of environment that can also attract many people from elsewhere around town...these things can snowball. For example, residents can give more restaurants a reason to open when the workers and conventioneers aren't around, bring furniture stores, add to pedestrian traffic, focus attention on nuisances, etc. Part of the snowball effect is that office workers and tourists will also tend to spend more when there's more for sale. Convention centers and arenas/stadia are a big problem because without a major event they're dead zones and barriers on a large scale. The bar is lower for something like a City Target. They have a lot of things but not a ton of anything, and they're smaller. I'm not impressed with Seattle's (the supermarket is 90% mass-market packaged stuff, they don't sell the other two things I've wanted to buy there, juggling balls and a computer, and they have zero ambiance) but they fill a lot of gaps. |
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By my count: NYC (historic stand alone) Brooklyn (historic stand alone) Boston (historic stand alone) Philadelphia (historic stand alone) DC (stand alone) Chicago - State Street (historic stand alone) Chicago - N. Michigan (urban mall) Miami (historic stand alone) Pittsburgh (historic stand alone) Minneapolis (historic stand alone) Cincinnati (urban mall) St. Louis (historic stand alone) San Francisco (historic stand alone) Los Angeles (urban mall) Seattle (historic stand alone) Portland, OR (historic stand alone) Spokane, WA (historic stand alone) Walla Walla, WA (historic stand alone) Salem, OR (urban mall) Providence, RI (urban mall) San Diego (urban mall) Sacramento (urban mall) Salt Lake City (urban mall) Closures over last few years: Boise (historic stand alone) Los Angeles (mall)(other location) Missoula, MT (historic stand alone) 2013 closures: Houston (historic stand alone) Honolulu (stand alone) Pasadena (urban mall) St. Paul (historic stand alone) I'm sure I'm missing some of current downtown stores located in malls where the mall name makes it sound suburban. Plus it gets hard to draw the line between what is a downtown store and a suburban store, for example there is a stand alone store in downtown Walnut Creek, CA, does that count? Does Pasadena count? I linked Google Street View for the lesser known stores in the list above |
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At least in the NYC area, I can think of the following downtown or urban stores- Manhattan- Macys- 34th Street- freestanding Brooklyn- Downtown Brooklyn- freestanding Brooklyn- Kings Plaza- urban mall Queens- Flushing Main Street- freestanding Queens- Queens Center- urban mall Queens- Douglaston Center- urban mall Bronx- Parkchester- freestanding Bronx- Bay Plaza- urban mall (u/c) Jersey City- Newport Center- urban mall White Plains- Galleria- urban mall Stamford- Town Center- urban mall |
^^ I'm pretty sure there is a Macy's in downtown Flushing, Queens as well.
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PDX, does your list mean closures? Macy's is open in Downtown Seattle. It's the former Bon Marche.
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We have to face the fact that these large Department stores have been and are dependent on very high volume, very dense locations, and few cities in the US provide this anymore. It is incredible when you go to Paris or London to see the street density and store density in their huge Department stores (like Galleries Lafayette on Haussman). This type of dense street department store shopping was still lively in the 50s in the US and declined with the suburban Mall development. It is unlikely to rerturn and we can just see how long even cities like Chicago can hang on.
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Way too much emphasis is put by SSPers on immediate population. I doubt Houston, Phoenix, or Jacksonville had many more people living downtown 50-60 years ago than they do now, yet they all had FAR more retail than they do now. Jacksonville in particular had huge amounts of retail for such a small metro area. They could support it because the downtown was a destination. How many people live within walking distance of the typical large American mall?
Stuff like dry cleaners and convenience stores depends on population within walking distance. For things like dept. stores that is really not relevant. They need to draw from a huge population anyways. |
Sorry for the confusion, that longer list is the remaining stores. But then below that I included the most recent closures.
Thanks, Wow, I'm amazed about the Bronx Parkchester location, just looking at that on Google Street View. I'd consider Parkchester & Flushing to be urban stores. |
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And then why do they have more downtown stores than the rest of the U.S. retailers combined? Why are they actually opening new urban stores? Sounds like a poor way to go about their fiendish plan. Back in the real world, I bet you they close stores because they're unprofitable, and could give a crap if the unprofitable store is downtown or in some sprawlsville. Crazy but true. |
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Furchgott's and Levy-Wolf (local chains) closed all their locations. JCPenney and Ivey's closed their downtown locations but expanded into the burbs with multiple smaller new locations. Sears and Rosenblooms (local) relocated to the burbs. Jax's largest store, May-Cohens was the last to close their flagship store. Just as soon as it closed the remaining stores were acquired by Maison Blanche and through a system of mergers are now suburban Belk stores today. Today, downtown has more than 1,000 residents, but the city's urban population within a 3 mile radius has declined 50% since 1950. The decline of the pre-consolidated 30 square mile city just happens to masked by rapid growth over the same time period in the remaining +750 square miles of suburban Duval County. |
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