Monday, November 06, 2006

Lord & Taylor May Leave Big Apple

Chain Store Age

NEW YORK - NRDC Equity Partners, the new owner of Lord & Taylor, may turn the retailer’s Fifth Avenue flagship in Manhattan into condominiums or office space, according to Crain’s New York Business.

The private-equity firm, which bought the department store chain in October, had previously spoke about reducing the flagship’s 600,000-sq.-ft. retail space, but the company’s president said he is considering more drastic plans.

The landmark has been on Fifth Avenue and West 39th Street for 92 years and may move to another Manhattan location. Or the company could depart from the city altogether.

“It’s nice having a Manhattan store, but I wouldn’t call it key,” Baker told Crain’s. “We want to be where people live, not where they work.”

Lord & Taylor photo by ShellyS via Flickr.

5 comments:

  1. They're really dragging out Lord & Taylor's death. Without the Chicago and New York flagships, it starts becoming pointless.

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  2. Lord & Taylor is not going to leave NYC. They might downsizt the Flagship, but the Flagship will stay on 5th Ave. Lord & taylor doesn't really need 611K square feet. Same stores Sales were up 10% in September and 5% in October. NRDC is also spending 150 million to update the stores. They have already started to change out the merchandise. It it much better with lots of higher end brands. Things are actaully going very well for Lord & Taylor and the company id doing better than NRDC expected. Also look for an expasnsion of the company starting in 2007.

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  3. If NRDC can turn around Lord & Taylor, that'll be the retail success story of the decade. I hope you're right about them staying put.

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  4. You really should link to the photo's flickr page, with the code flickr provides. As it is, I reset things so people can't blog my photos without asking me first. I usually don't mind, but I like to know where they're going to appear. :)

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  5. I didn't mean not to link to your photo's page, but it's a challenge to change to the new code now that you've disabled the download and blogging capabilities on your Flickr pages.

    If you want, I can replace the photo with one I took last time I was in the city.

    No harm intended :-)

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