Quote:
Originally Posted by Pedestrian
In San Francisco, Macy's grew by annexing the space of adjacent department stores that went out of business and physically combining the buildings. Originally, their building was the center of a group on the south side of Union Square. Then they bought the I. Magnin building next door and basically had ⅔ of the block. Then they bought the Liberty House building across the street (Stockton St.) and made it their Men's Store.
Now they are shrinking back to something like their original footprint by selling off the other real estate for its probable conversion (at least the upper floors) to office or some other use.
It's worth noting that remaining in the Union Square area of SF are the following large department stores (besides the smaller Macy's which is still sizeable): Nordstrom, Bloomingdale's, Barney's New York, Saks Fifth Ave, Nieman-Marcus.
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With all the closing of department stores, downtown Toronto has actually gone from 4 to 5 department stores:
Bay Queen Street (one of the largest stores in the world)
Bay Bloor Street
Saks Fifth Avenue (opened last year)
Nordstrom (opened last year in former Sears space)
Holt Renfrew (there are plans to expand it vertically from it's current 4 floors to 8 floors)
There was also speculation that Neiman Marcus or Bloomingdale's might open a store in the 1 Bloor Street East development. We shall see.
Overall there's been at least 7 new upscale/upscalish department stores open in Toronto + Mississauga in the last year or so:
Nordstrom downtown Toronto
Nordstrom Sherway Gardens
Nordstrom Yorkdale Mall
Saks Fifth Avenue downtown Toronto
Saks Fifth Avenue Sherway Gardens
Holt Renfrew Square One (Mississauga)
Simons Square One (Mississauga)
The downtown Saks, downtown Nordstrom, and Square One Simons all took existing space, but I believe the other 4 stores were all new construction.