How many cities still have downtown department stores?

[montréaliste]

Montreal has Hudson’s Bay, Simons which replaced Simpsons department store years after it closed, and another retailer had replaced it before going bankrupt (Les Ailes de la
mode.) There is the old Ogilvy dept store which is now Holt Renfrew/Ogilvy.

Up until 1978, there were 6 major department stores downtown.

Dupuis frères
Simpsons
Eatons
The Bay (preciously Morgans)
Holt Renfrew
Ogilvy

[homebucket]

SF has Macy’s, Nordstrom, Bloomingdale’s, Saks Fifth Avenue, and Neiman Marcus. It used to have Barney’s and FAO Schwarz.

[memester]

Originally Posted by iheartthed

These cities each have at least one left:

New York
Chicago
Philadelphia
Boston
Washington
Minneapolis
San Francisco

I think Atlanta has a couple of department stores but I don't think they're in locations that fit the definition of "downtown"(?).

SF has Saks, Macy's, Nordstrom's, Neiman-Marcus, and Bloomingdale's all near Union Square.

[pdxtex]

Portlands has had quite the ups and downs the last 30 years or so. I got here in the mid 90s. That was probably when downtown was at its retail zenith. Three department stores, a fully occupied luxuryesque mall with two wings, countless smaller boutiques, 4 separate multiplexes. Man I want that sh!t back. The tipping point for downtown was probably the dot com bust but by that pont the pearl just starting to get going. We've practically built a brand new CBD north of Burnside in the last 20 years so that's where all the action is these days. No department store bit stand alone locations of pretty high end athletic brands, whole foods, cb2! Im pretty excited for that actually. We also had another giant mega mall across the river from downtown with a second Nordstrom and Macy's but alas, that too it retail archeology. Mazeltov!

[Wigs]

Originally Posted by montréaliste

Montreal has Hudson’s Bay, Simons which replaced Simpsons department store years after it closed, and another retailer had replaced it before going bankrupt (Les Ailes de la
mode.) There is the old Ogilvy dept store which is now Holt Renfrew/Ogilvy.

Up until 1978, there were 6 major department stores downtown.

Dupuis frères
Simpsons
Eatons
The Bay (preciously Morgans)
Holt Renfrew
Ogilvy

That must have been a sight to see. All that downtown retail!

I wonder why Nordstrom doesn't consider building a store in downtown Montreal. Surely the demographics of a 4.3M person Metro (1.8M city) are ripe enough for investment.

[Steely Dan]

not including discount chains like Target, Marshalls, TJ Maxx, etc., downtown Chicago still has:

- Macy's in the grand old Marshall Fields state street store in the loop (there also used to be a second Macy's (Marshall Fields) up on the mag mile, but covid killed it).

- Nordstrom on the mag mile

- Bloomingdale's on the mag mile

- Sak's Fifth Avenue on the mag mile

- Neiman Marcus on the mag mile

[mhays]

Seattle has the flagship Nordstrom and a full-sized Target. Macy's (was the Bon Marche) closed before Covid.

[Comrade]

Salt Lake City has a couple and they're both located in City Creek, an open-air shopping center.

Macy's:



Nordstrom:

[Wigs]

Comrade, City Creek may be one of the nicest looking shopping centres in North America.

[jmecklenborg]

Originally Posted by Centropolis

Downtown Cincy has a Saks. Probably the #1 under-rated downtown in the midwest and weirdly the most visited midwestern urban core outside of St. Louis for me during the pandemic era.

Cincinnati became the headquarters of Macy's back in the 1950s when Fred Lazarus, owner of Cincinnati's Shillito's Dept Store, formed Federated Department Stores. This parent company enabled all of the downtown departments stores nationwide under its umbrella to do purchasing as a bloc, develop category strategies, exchange inventory, etc. In the late 1990s, Federated changed its name to Macy's when it rebranded many of its department stores under that famous nameplate. Macy's picked up and moved its HQ from Cincinnati to New York a couple years ago, around 2019.

My old boss was an accountant at one of the old downtown department stores in the 1960s and he said he was involved in doing payroll back before checks. He said that the accounting department would tabulate everyone's pay, then go down to the loading dock, meet a few armored trucks, then pay every employee with cash in envelopes. He said it was a ridiculously tedious process, plus it was really dangerous since there was always the threat of a robbery. Those department stores had hundreds of employees back then so you can imagine what a scene it was each payday.

My grandmother was a buyer for Shillito's from ages 18-22, until she got married and started having kids. She traveled around upstate New York by train and bought clothes directly from the factories, back when American companies still made clothes.

She always claimed that this was a very prestigious job and I don't doubt it since she and the many similar young women who worked at the department stores were the sort who would have gone to college had they been born a generation later. When I was a kid I remember hearing people complain about how bad the service had become in retail since just 20-30 years earlier all of these intelligent women with good high school educations were working at them.

[DetroitSky]

All of Detroit's downtown department stores closed in the '80s, sadly. Our three big stores, Hudson's, Kern's and Crowley's, have been demolished and replaced by other buildings. We do have some relatively upscale stores downtown though, including a Gucci that just opened, and a Target is planned for a site about a mile north of downtown, so there's that. I'd like to see a Macy's or something open in the new Hudson's Site development when that's completed, but I think thats unlikely unfortunately because of the current situation in the retail world.

[pdxtex]

Originally Posted by DetroitSky

All of Detroit's downtown department stores closed in the '80s, sadly. Our three big stores, Hudson's, Kern's and Crowley's, have been demolished and replaced by other buildings. We do have some relatively upscale stores downtown though, including a Gucci that just opened, and a Target is planned for a site about a mile north of downtown, so there's that. I'd like to see a Macy's or something open in the new Hudson's Site development when that's completed, but I think thats unlikely unfortunately because of the current situation in the retail world.

I was just a kid when Hudsons closed. I grew up in Ann Arbor and then Lansing. Both cities had a Jacobson's. The East Lansing location was a relic but it was still really fancy. Giant jewelry department, dual wrap around staircase, copper accents above the doorways. The lady in the men's department was from Denmark. Way old school.

[Double L]

Houston had a ten story downtown department store that was originally a local Houston chain called Foleys and later became a Macys that lasted from 1957 to 2013 but it has been demolished today.

[McBane]

Originally Posted by Wigs

That must have been a sight to see. All that downtown retail!

I wonder why Nordstrom doesn't consider building a store in downtown Montreal. Surely the demographics of a 4.3M person Metro (1.8M city) are ripe enough for investment.

Don't take it personally. Department stores are not exactly a booming industry. While the OP question is interesting, I'm curious if any new department stores are still being built these days. Downtown ones seem to be closing and it's not like anyone is building malls either.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by Wigs

That must have been a sight to see. All that downtown retail!

I wonder why Nordstrom doesn't consider building a store in downtown Montreal. Surely the demographics of a 4.3M person Metro (1.8M city) are ripe enough for investment.

Probably because Nordstrom, like a number of US retailers, sees "French" as a big pain the ass and hesitates to go to Quebec for this reason.

Opening up in Montreal means signage in French, programming software in French, staff training in French, etc.

That's why Nordstrom is in Ottawa which is much smaller than Montreal, but they can operate entirely in English there just as they do in the US.

Speaking of Ottawa, it has Nordstrom, Hudson's Bay and Simons as downtown department stores.

[pdxtex]

Originally Posted by McBane

Don't take it personally. Department stores are not exactly a booming industry. While the OP question is interesting, I'm curious if any new department stores are still being built these days. Downtown ones seem to be closing and it's not like anyone is building malls either.

Guh bye malls. Hello power centers! Yeah I'd say we're entering the golden age of down market suburban retail tho with work from home, existing successful malls seem to be expanding in some places. I did find two new Dillard's being built but they are just replacing two older stores. One in wait for it, .....Utah! And the other in Amarillo. No surprises there.

[JManc]

Originally Posted by mhays

Seattle has the flagship Nordstrom and a full-sized Target. Macy's (was the Bon Marche) closed before Covid.

That Target was a bit gross.

[Londonee]

Not quite the same, but Center City Philly also has a Nordstrom Rack and a Bloomingdale's Outlet - almost across the street from one another.

[IluvATX]

Anchorage has a somewhat large mall in the center of downtown. JCPenney is the only anchor now that Nordstrom’s closed during the pandemic.

[jmecklenborg]

A feature of the old departments stores were their related downtown warehouses, which were typically very odd structures. Here is one in DT Cincinnati that has sat mostly or entirely vacant for many years:
https://www.google.com/maps/@39.0991...7i16384!8i8192

This is another former department store warehouse. This one was converted to artist's studios in the late 80s or early 90s:
https://www.google.com/maps/@39.1113...7i16384!8i8192

This one had an attached warehouse that is still there and still doing nothing:
https://www.google.com/maps/@39.1022...7i16384!8i8192