Macy's is not long for the world, COVID or not.

don't bring your uk variant over here boy, we got enough trouble.

or you know, your interstate peoria variant, whatever the case may be. :rolleyes:

It's not genetics, your country is just run by a bunch of incompetent morons. So is mine.

Your theory doesn't explain why places like Australia and New Zealand have been very successful at stopping the spread. Preventing a very contagious virus from spiraling out of control in the first place seems to have done the trick in APAC.

Well, if you all stopped doing all of your shopping online, we’d actually have a reason to have cities again after Covid, besides just being places to ooh and aah at all of the tall buildings.

^ i go into macys. its pretty empty. nice shopping experience actually vs normal.

Macy's sealed its fate when they bought out other department store chains; Marshall Fields, Foley's, Hess's, etc. and then became a stripped down version of its former self and ubiquitous as a Target. Last time I was in Chicago, we went to Bloomingdales across the street because everyone has a Macy's and the only special Macy's ripe for a touristy area is the one in NY.

Many countries are good about wearing masks, and people act like they care. Or at least they don't want the shame of endangering others.

The fact that the US and UK are full of selfish d-bags is the biggest reason our shutdowns have had limited effect. That plus the lack of shutdowns in many areas of course.

The Macy's in the loop is actually cool (I live a block away from it). The Macy's in Water Tower Place is I'm sure as cool as the ones in suburban malls.

Water Tower Place opened in 1976 and half of the shops in it including Macy’s seem just about as dated. :ancient:

As long as I’ve lived in Chicago, I’ve half wondered whether the Water Tower stores should just ditch the place and join the rest of the middle class mall shopping on State Street or even Block 37 if they could get a critical mass there.

Then convert the old mall into whatever else makes sense- offices, apartments, warehouse, etc.

Yeah right, I love cities, but I'm never shopping in some overpriced shopping district just to be seen or supposedly help a brick and mortar retailer like Macy's. I'm getting my stuff at a discount online with free delivery so I don't have to schlep it around. But don't worry, I'm not leaving the city anytime soon, and I'll be happily contributing in all other ways that make a city great.

I'm more than happy with the paradigm shift that's focusing cities and property owners to rethink their approach to retail and office uses due to the pandemic.

^ Are you? Last I checked, this is SkyscraperPage.com

If concentrating large numbers of people together to work or shop is being subjected to a "paradigm shift" that you are "more than happy with", then I'd like you to explain how that paradigm creates the types of highrise-dominated, walkable, vibrant cityscapes that this forum celebrates.

Last I checked, just having a bunch of residential highrises where everybody just sits in their condo and takes deliveries, works from home, and hardly goes anywhere for anything is NOT what the majority of the people in this forum think of when they are celebrating our great cities.

Australia and New Zealand are island nations that employed very strict travel restrictions (of the sort Trump proposed and most here opposed) early in the pandemic. Australians living abroad still can’t go home. And then they had extremely draconian lockdowns that, even in retrospect, are not justifiable in my view.

It’s amazing that people ask “why didn’t we do what China did” without asking themselves whether we should have.

And currently, they are still dealing with outbreaks in Sydney and elsewhere, closing beaches, etc. After all of this they’re going to be in the same boat as the rest of us.

Everyone is going to get Covid. It’s going to circulate again next winter.

Right, the Loop Macys is quite nice. The Water Tower Macys is mall generic.

I always wondered why they kept both. I guess it's because Michigan Ave. is the primary shopping hub, but the Loop store is iconic. But Covid forced them to pick one.

^ correct. state street macy's (the old gargantuan and historic marshall fields beast) is the important one.

the macy's in water tower place was nothing terribly special, little different from any generic mall macy's anywhere else.

the fact that downtown chicago was able to support and hold on to two different macy's for as long as it did is really the only surprising thing.

You live in an island nation, lol. What's your point?

China is operating at something far more resembling normal than the U.S., so I appreciate the steps that they took in hindsight. If your country had done what they did, you wouldn't be crying about another lockdown right now.

You don't know that anymore than you knew a year ago how the world would look today.

LoL. Hilarious!! I'm all for mixed-use neighborhoods and housing of all types. I live in a skyscraper, and haven't owned a car for many years of my life until recent. To this day, I walk or take transit to work. I've never been a fan of segregated land-use types like having acres of downtown space reserved for offices. The pandemic may very will kill the office-only district in favor of mixed-use. A good thing in my eyes. Care to guess how many hours a day I actually spend in my apartment? I hate being indoors at home all day, even if it's winter! It's unfortunate that in your eyes I also have to shop an an overpriced retailer, taking advantage of minimum wage employees, to be considered an urbanite. :rolleyes:

Especially when Macy’s is shutting down at least a quarter of its stores nationwide to save itself from effective bankruptcy, the luxury of two stores a mile down the road from the each other isn’t an option anymore.

$85 million revenue in 2014 to only $54 million revenue in 2019, with Covid as the nail in the coffin.

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/01/06/macy...full-list.html

Macys isn't expensive nor do its employees make minimum wage. In fact Macys is unionized with good benefits.

I think the underlying point is that if you support mixed-use urbanism, you should support brick-and-mortar urban retail, and not order all your crap online. We try and support our neighborhood brick-and-mortar retailers whenever possible.

I though the State St. Macy was still called 'Marshall Fields'. I've been there a couple of times but never paid attention to the signs. That's a Chicago institution though.

I'll support my neighborhood pub, neighborhood restaurant, neighborhood specialty store (like my butcher selling high-quality meats) or other similar small business, but not necessarily businesses that just buys their stuff in bulk from the third-world and resells it at an inflated price because it's in a trendy retail district. I'm going to get the exact same product online for 2/3rd the cost. To each his own I guess, but unless it's a supermarket, I'm not a fan of the big or trendy department stores when it comes to retail unless it's for something unique, not something that can be found in most cities, towns and suburbs in America.

I didn't know that Macy's was unionized and pays a livable wage to their employees, that's a good thing at least, but not the norm from my experience.