  Krapug Member Username: Krapug Post Number: 47 Registered: 12-2003 Posted From: 24.191.57.248 |
As some of you know, there is a rally planned in Chicago on Saturday September 9 to protest the conversion of Marshall Field's to macy's(and the "cheapening" of the store that is already happening). In the middle of this Bon-Ton Inc announced yesterday that the landmark Carson-Pirie-Scott State Street store will close in March '07. Bon-Ton is claiming "high operating costs" amoung other reasons for this, HOWEVER whenever Bon-Ton has aquired a new chain, the "downtown" locations were usually closed in the first year. Just another example of the chaos in the retail world. A number of people in Chicago land are calling Von Maur their new store of choice. What's Von Maur? Ken | ||
Quinn Member Username: Quinn Post Number: 900 Registered: 01-2005 Posted From: 69.242.213.101 |
Not surprised about Pirie Scott (we were having a discussion about when this would happen the other day)...SUCKS THOUGH. The store is well known for its architecture, especially the fabulous entrance and detail work along the first floor by Louis Sullivan. That building is truly a gem...not worried about them preserving it though in Chicago ;) | ||
Quinn Member Username: Quinn Post Number: 901 Registered: 01-2005 Posted From: 69.242.213.101 |
In case you haven't seen or been (from googling) this is CPS. | ||
Kathleen Member Username: Kathleen Post Number: 1525 Registered: 10-2003 Posted From: 69.14.122.57 |
Thanks, Quinn, for the visual. I hadn't connected the store name with the building. For Krapug: From www.vonmaur.com: "In 1872, the von Maur family opened its first store in a 20 x 50 foot rented storefront in Davenport, Iowa. Today, Von Maur has grown to a 23 location chain with department stores in Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Michigan, Minnesota, Nebraska and Ohio that range in size from 42,000 to 203,000 square feet. Our long-range plans find us exploring expansion opportunities in medium to large markets throughout the Midwest." More about them....http://www.vonmaur.com/Default .aspx?PageId=2&nt=4 | ||
Detroitteacher Member Username: Detroitteacher Post Number: 525 Registered: 06-2006 Posted From: 152.163.100.8 |
There is a Von Maur at Laurel Park Place. It's a nice store but too high end for my tastes. I went there a few times (looking like I always do, t-shirt and jeans, hair all askew) and the sales people literally followed me around like I was going to steal something and then refused to wait on me when I wanted to look at something that was in a showcase. I made a stink and took my cash elsewhere after I loudly announced that they just lost a sale (I was waving my credit card around while I was making my little stink). I haven't been back since. | ||
Zephyrprocess Member Username: Zephyrprocess Post Number: 1 Registered: 08-2006 Posted From: 69.241.250.214 |
Yes, Von Maur took over the former Jacobson's locations at both Laurel Park and Briarwood (the migration of Jacobson's to Briarwood being another "downtown-to-mall" event) and they occupy the same market niche. Can't express how disappointed I am to hear about CPS; I was just in Chicago two weekends ago (to see the Tigers lose) and would have made a special stop, had I known. | ||
Miketoronto Member Username: Miketoronto Post Number: 280 Registered: 07-2004 Posted From: 207.61.38.86 |
This is nothing new. BON TON is known for shutting downtown stores even if they are making money. | ||
Thejesus Member Username: Thejesus Post Number: 264 Registered: 06-2006 Posted From: 68.62.6.138 |
Von Maur is nice... There is one in Laurel Park mall in livonia...only been in their once to get my watch fixed, but they had live piano music in the store and everything was laid out really nice... I was impressed | ||
Krapug Member Username: Krapug Post Number: 48 Registered: 12-2003 Posted From: 24.191.57.248 |
From some prior posts, yes Bon-Ton seems to have "downtown phobia" as the downtown stores that it closed in Allentown and Lancaster, Pa., as well as Red Bank, NJ, were all proftable Another chain Dillard's has the same infliction, and it's last "downtown" store (in Cleveland). closed a few years back. Von Maur seems like a class operation, and on their website it was noted that ALL their stores are closed on Labor Day. WOW, finally a store that realizes you can not get quality sales help, and be open every day including all holidays (save for Thanksgiving and Christmas). In fact it should be a national law that ALL retail businesses close on Memorial Day, July 4th and Labor Day. Gee people might actually spend these holidays with family and friends (imagine that). Ken | ||
Rosedaleken Member Username: Rosedaleken Post Number: 231 Registered: 06-2005 Posted From: 69.219.37.195 |
CPS had reasonable prices and was just fun to walk around. I've been going on lunch breaks, and if they couldn't find something in time they'd offer to have it waiting at 6 when I left work. Nothing but good things to say about the store. | ||
Kathleen Member Username: Kathleen Post Number: 1526 Registered: 10-2003 Posted From: 69.14.122.57 |
Rosedaleken: That's exactly how I remember the Hudson's downtown store!!! (Message edited by Kathleen on August 26, 2006) | ||
Rrl Member Username: Rrl Post Number: 595 Registered: 12-2003 Posted From: 12.214.88.193 |
Von Maur is a good establishment. They will ship items free of charge, and if you use their charge accounts, there is NEVER any interest applied to balances. Good customer service. | ||
Hardhat Member Username: Hardhat Post Number: 166 Registered: 10-2003 Posted From: 70.237.11.127 |
I took a bus tour of Chicago this spring. The tour guide said most of the big chain retail stores on the Miracle Mile don't make money, they maintain a presence there for the prestige. Take it for what it's worth. | ||
Dalangdon Member Username: Dalangdon Post Number: 53 Registered: 03-2006 Posted From: 67.171.17.254 |
CPS isn't on the Magnificent (not Miracle) Mile. The Magnificent Mile is Michigan Avenue from the Chicago river to Lake Shore Drive. Take THAT for what it's worth. Von Maurs are great stores, and have gotten better with time. Sort of like Nordstrom before they got all pseudo-glam | ||
Royce Member Username: Royce Post Number: 1786 Registered: 07-2004 Posted From: 69.209.177.31 |
Americans are an interesting group of humans. Either we are just too damn lazy or stricken with short attention-spans that causes us to have such a difficult time shopping in a department store. Maybe the problem with departments stores is that people can't be seen by others or they can't see others in them like they can in the halls of a mall. Being seen by as many people as possible while shopping is very important to some people. When teens are hanging out in malls to meet other teens, their not hanging out in department stores. Time and convenience are arguments explaining why department stores are declining, yet many people have all the time in the world to shop for Christmas gifts come Christmas. I'm sure they step into deparment stores while Christmas shopping, do they not? Department stores were created because they made logical sense: sell the majority of items that people want in one place so that they won't have to go anywhere else. People go to Target or Wal-mart for more than just one kind of item, so what is it that people don't like about traditional department stores? I have a theory as to why traditional departments stores are no longer popular. First of all, they have more than one floor. It appears to me that people don't like shopping on several floors, even when there's an escalator or elevator available. Secondly, traditional department stores may no longer be popular because they don't have shopping carts. Give Americans an extra place to put shopping items and we're probably going to buy more items in the store that has shopping carts than one that doesn't. In conclusion, let me just say that maybe the key to traditional departments stores survival is to only have one floor of merchandise and to offer to its customers a sea of shopping carts. It works for Wal-mart and Target. | ||
Douglasm Member Username: Douglasm Post Number: 637 Registered: 10-2003 Posted From: 66.189.188.28 |
Someone should note somewhere that the building itself is not in any danger. Apparently the landlord will take the space vacated by Carson's and turn it into offices, with the first 2 floors remaining retail..... | ||
Hysteria Member Username: Hysteria Post Number: 1222 Registered: 02-2006 Posted From: 64.12.116.204 |
CPS should have carried higher-end merchandise at the State Street store to attract more shoppers. The suburban stores often have a better selection. | ||
Hysteria Member Username: Hysteria Post Number: 1223 Registered: 02-2006 Posted From: 152.163.100.8 |
 Grand old stores too old, grand Carsons' flagship no longer destination http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/chi-0608260261aug27,1,6686663.story?coll=chi-business-hed Can a store be too big? The Bon-Ton Stores Inc. thinks so. The Pennsylvania-based company's decision to shutter its Carson Pirie Scott flagship next March highlights what many in the department store industry have known for years: Grand old department stores as big as a city block and older than their patrons are a luxury that few companies can afford to operate. The Carsons building on State Street in the Loop is 1 million square feet. That's big enough to fit four Wal-Mart Supercenter stores inside. Carsons sold the building years ago and is leasing back a slimmer 600,000 square feet inside. But still, that's big enough to fit nearly two Ikea stores. The department store flagship grew up when shoppers looked forward to making a special trip downtown to visit the one big store where they could buy books, toys, furniture, clothing, bedding, cookware, and in later days, stereos, all under one roof. Those days are gone, but the buildings remain. "They're white elephants," said Homer Johnson, professor of management at Loyola University Chicago's school of business administration and an expert on the history of department stores. "There is just too much space and not enough merchandise to put in it. These big stores are no longer destinations. You can get most of what you want somewhere else." Today, shoppers drive to Wal-Mart or Target, park in an expansive parking lot and walk through a one-level store that has all the items they need, frequently including groceries and gas for the car. But even those one-stop shops have their limits. Wal-Mart's biggest Supercenters are 230,000 square feet, not nearly as big as Carsons. Cabela's, the warehouse-size sports store from Nebraska, operates some of the biggest stores in the country, big enough to hold an indoor mountain. Its largest stores are also only 230,000 square feet. Indeed, entire malls could take up the space Carsons is leaving behind, including the Westfield North Bridge mall on North Michigan Avenue that is home to Nordstrom. Flagships are "antiquated notions," said Neil Stern, an analyst at Chicago-based McMillan Doolittle. "No one really has any thoughts of how to merchandise to be effective in 600,000 square feet. The notion of a giant flagship just doesn't work anymore." But not every merchant agrees with that thinking. Just down the street from Carsons, Federated Department Stores Inc. has taken over the massive Marshall Field's flagship and is about to convert it to Macy's. At 1.8 million square feet, the structure is the second-largest store in the nation after Macy's Herald Square in New York, which is 2.2 million square feet. While Stern predicts Macy's will eventually cut back on even that amount of space, Federated is committing itself to the flagship concept. Federated Chairman and CEO Terry Lundgren has taken great pains to assure Chicago that the State Street flagship, even as its name changes to Macy's, will remain intact. Lundgren is on a mission to revive the department store and looks to the flagships at Macy's Herald Square in New York, Macy's Union Square in San Francisco and the soon-to-be Macy's State Street in Chicago as key to his plan. "Our philosophy is the flagships are the hubs of activity that draw the largest customer audiences and can offer the best of everything," said Jim Sluzewski, vice president of corporate communications at Federated in Cincinnati. "It takes a significant amount of money to make a flagship function. For us the concept of the flagship is very much alive." Still, flagship stores have been disappearing for the past decade. In 1998, Hudson's 2 million-square foot flagship store in Detroit, billed as the world's tallest department store at about 25 stories tall, was demolished. And last month Vornado Realty Trust agreed to buy Federated's 656,000-square-foot Filene's flagship in Boston for about $100 million and turn it into offices and shops. Michael Bennett, a 26-year-old shopper who lives in Lincoln Park, says grand old stores don't hold as much appeal as what's inside them. If the store has something he can't find elsewhere, such as the Thomas Pink shirt shop inside Marshall Field's, he'll make a special trip. Otherwise, there's little reason to go. "For the time it takes to take the el downtown on the weekend, I can easily hop in the car and go to Old Orchard." | ||
Miketoronto Member Username: Miketoronto Post Number: 282 Registered: 07-2004 Posted From: 65.92.145.94 |
Flagships of course can still work. No matter what todays Wal-Mart's, and smaller stores in the suburbs do not offer the kind of selection a proper downtown flagship can offer. Of course flagships are declining when you have guys like the one in the article above who lives in the city but drives to a suburban mall to shop. Some kind of city dweller he is. I always am amazed at how much better flagships are after you look through a suburban branch store. I don't believe the department store is dead. Look at Target. That is basically a department store. The reason traditional department stores are having trouble, is because they are not moving up to the challenge and reinventing how they sell to customers. We are still shopping at department stores. Just we are shopping at Target style department stores. If people are so strapped for time, then department stores make perfect sense, as everything is under one roof. Anyway I always shop at the flagship Hudson's Bay Store in downtown Toronto and its great. I always find great things, have great selection, and style. Who would give that up for a friggen prefab box with two floors. I want my 9 floor department store thanks  I love when I buy gifts for people and they are like "where did you get that I love it". And I go "Hudson's Bay", and they are like "I have never seen that in the store before", and I am like "well its from the Queen Street store downtown". Of course its not going to be in the suburban stores. Only Queen Street If CPS really had marketed and made that store different from the suburbs, it would have been great. Maybe I am just weird. I don't shop all the time, and when I do, I don't mind taking half a dy and going downtown and enjoying the city while shopping at the best selection in the Metro area. | ||
Dalangdon Member Username: Dalangdon Post Number: 54 Registered: 03-2006 Posted From: 67.171.17.254 |
I think that the thing that a lot of flagship stores are lacking is affordable merchandise. I remember when the stores all had bargain basements. My mom, who liked quality clothes but was thrifty, would buy an expensive dress in the ladies department, but would go to the basement to buy stuff like kid's underwear and potholders. Part of the success of the old-line department stores was that they attracted people from all economic levels. It wasn't until Macy's converted their basement to "the cellar" and stocked it with foufy stuff, that the department stores started getting away from the lower price merchandise. Maybe they should look into that again. I live in Seattle, which is currently undergoing a huge residential real estate boom, yet there hasn't been a place to buy the low-priced stuff that everybody needs since Woolworth's was killed by stupid corporate management (Foot locker Anyone?) Despite the fact we have a eight story Macy's "Flagship" (the old Bon Marche store) you still have to drive to the suburbs if you want to get the sort of things you need to stock a kitchen without going broke. | ||
Rosedaleken Member Username: Rosedaleken Post Number: 232 Registered: 06-2005 Posted From: 64.251.230.39 |
I would almost understand the Marshall Field's location on State closing before the Carson's. There's another huge Field's less than 2 miles away. CPS catered to consumers looking to spend less money than Nordstrom's, Fields, etc. You can't even find Dockers at the Mag Mile Fields, it's Polo slacks ($80+) or up. If there's anything this store had, it was affordable merchandise. This is too bad. As the article above suggests, most other reasonable stores aren't accessible w/o a car. Unless you want to dodge slacks with one pant leg longer than the other at TJ Maxx... | ||
Dalangdon Member Username: Dalangdon Post Number: 55 Registered: 03-2006 Posted From: 66.54.213.11 |
When I say "affordable merchandise" I meant a specific "bargain basement" section. Downtown department stores, in order to survive in the suburban-centric 60's - 80's, curtailed merchandise and catered more to the office worker crowd who came in at lunch and maybe on the way home after work. That meant clothes, housewares and furniture, tending to be middle-to higher-end stuff. I'd argue that now that people are starting to live downtown again, these stores can (or should) start focusing more on general merchandise, and be known for having a section that is discount. The draw being that you can get your designer items and your (for example) vacuum cleaner bags in the same place. Make them a draw for all of the population, not just the people who come in for work. I live in a neighborhood immeidately adjacent to downtown and would much rather come downtown to shop than schlep it out to the nearest mall, which is way down by the airport, and a real hassle to get to. | ||
Focusonthed Member Username: Focusonthed Post Number: 451 Registered: 02-2006 Posted From: 198.175.55.5 |
So basically, Wal-Mart without parking? As someone said in another thread, funny how we come full-circle. | ||
Dalangdon Member Username: Dalangdon Post Number: 56 Registered: 03-2006 Posted From: 66.54.213.11 |
No, not "Wal-Mart with Parking" but thank you for that is a simple-minded analogy. It's nice that you tried to partake in the conversation, however inanely. What I am suggesting - stay with me here - is that stores can sell HIGH-END merchandise along with general lower-priced merchandise. Sort of like - are you still with me? - Hudsons, or Marshall Fields or a million other stores did when people lived near downtown. Since people are starting to move back into urban areas, it might be time to revive that practice. In that way yes - it is coming full circle. | ||
Miketoronto Member Username: Miketoronto Post Number: 289 Registered: 07-2004 Posted From: 207.61.38.86 |
It can work. The Hudson's Bay Queen Street store in downtown Toronto is doing this like this now. In the basement level they opened a drugstore, and mini snack store, where you can buy things like papertowls, batteries, etc. It has been working pretty good, and even has some frozen food, etc. And right across the isle is the expensive chocolate area, and everything works together. So department stores can do that. That is why these flagships did well at one time, because they catered to all walks of life, and not just rich people. We all like to buy nice things, but sometimes you do need an inexpensive thing, and department stores should offer more of that. | ||
Hysteria Member Username: Hysteria Post Number: 1230 Registered: 02-2006 Posted From: 216.223.168.132 |
Marshall Field's on State Street has relatively cheaper foods, snacks, etc. in their basement as well. I think it's heavily shopped by the employees. | ||
Dalangdon Member Username: Dalangdon Post Number: 57 Registered: 03-2006 Posted From: 67.171.17.254 |
Seattle's Bon Marche had a drugstore on the basement level before the whole residential real estate thing took off. But then Nordstrom took over the old Frederick & Nelson store (formerly a division of Marshall Fields) and put their men's clothing in the basement. The Bon is so insecure about Nordy's that they had to copy them, which was unfortunate: Previously, men's suits were very happy in the Mezzanine, overlooking the first floor. Obviously, Nordstrom will never do that: Their function is to smile while separating the Nouveau riche from their money. But Macy's has the savvy and the deep pocketbooks to make it work. | ||
Busterwmu Member Username: Busterwmu Post Number: 268 Registered: 09-2004 Posted From: 141.218.35.139 |
Deal with it Chicago. May JL Hudsons live on forever!!! | ||
1953 Member Username: 1953 Post Number: 984 Registered: 12-2004 Posted From: 65.54.154.117 |
www.chicagoyes.com |
