They led us on for MORE THAN A YEAR and then pulled out!
Goddamned stupid, suburban-biased, shit-eating morons! This isn’t Fair Oaks Mall; you don’t get everything on a silver platter here!
And Friendship Heights has enough retail already; DC badly needs a department store in the old Woodward & Lothrop building, which has been vacant since 1995. Its empty state makes the whole neighborhood look ratty.
(And patrons of the public library a block away need a CLEAN public restroom they can use.)
Well, I care enough to reply. I worked at Hecht’s when I was in college and have been following the department store biz ever since, and it ain’t pretty. Large, free-standing stores like the old Woodies are closing everywhere. It’s just so damn hard to make them pay, because the real estate is astronomical, maintenance is expensive in old buildings, and parking is often a problem for shoppers. (I didn’t know about the financial arrangements for malls - interesting that the small shops subsidize the anchors, which I suppose makes sense.)
Just within the last ten years or so, LA lost Bullock’s, SF lost Magnin’s, Minneapolis lost Donaldson’s, Seattle lost Frederick & Nelson, Philly lost Wanamaker (Woodie’s twin), Newark lost Hahne’s…the list goes on and on. Here in New York we’re losing Sterns, which succeeded Abraham & Straus in the sad shell of Gimbel’s. Altman’s is now a (beautiful) library and graduate school, Bonwit’s is but a memory and Alexanders is a very large hole in the ground. It’ll be interesting to see if all of the remaining stores manage to survive this recession - Federated (parent of Macy’s and Bloomingdale’s) and Saks are both sputtering, May Co. (parent of Lord & Taylor and - in DC - Hecht’s) is showing uncharacteristic languor and even Neiman Marcus, which owns Bergdorf Goodman, is having a rough time.
I am amazed at the major stores that are declaring bankruptcy in the last few years alone. I look at the economy and wonder why. IANAE so I do not understand why we are having a rash of stores going out of business.
I do understand how hard it is to get a decent department store to go into a downtown area. My city (population>500K) has been having a hard time with getting shops to fill a large mall in the downtown area. The major department stores left a few years ago.
How odd! I was just drinking beer w/buds and the topic got onto Macy’s, and how they were just a part of Federated. The same company that owns many other Department stores. Many city Dep. store may be a part of it Where I live, it is Foleys. In fact, Macy’s has largely moved out. Would Macy’s interfere too much with any local Federated chain?
Soooo…any Michigan Dopers wanna join me in lamenting the loss of Hudson’s? The building’s gone, and every mall store I’ve seen has been turned into a Marshall Field. I don’t want Marshall Field. Marshall Field is a Chicago store. I want Detroit’s own Hudon’s back!
Road rash: Foley’s is actually part of the May Company now - back in the 80s it was part of Federated. May then consolidated its Denver Dry Goods and May Daniels & Fischer divisions into Foleys.
Neidhart: Yup, Wanamakers died simultaneously with Woodies, although apparently the old Philly store is now a Lord & Taylor. Similarly, the Frederick & Nelson in Seattle (also a “carriage-trade” store) is now the flagship store for Nordstrom’s.
Juniper200: In January the Target Corp (née Dayton-Hudson) announced that all of its department stores are being rebranded as Marshall Fields. Minneapolitans felt even more betrayed - Target’s a hometown-company-made-good and still they abandoned the hallowed Dayton’s name.
The suspicion is that eventually Target will sell the chain to another purchaser - the real reason behind the stated one, which was that the Marshall Fields name is better known than the other two. It probably won’t happen at the moment with the economy slowing, but Marshall Fields would make a good geographic fit with either Federated or May. It’s been a laggard within Target for at least ten years, but god bless 'em they keep trying to get their results turned around, so they’ll earn an enhanced price.
Ohhh, just talk to the people who used to shop at Gertz’s or Bamberger’s or Abraham & Straus or Sterns or Davis Paxon or Jordan Marsh or Bullock’s or Broadway or Emporium Capwell or Weinstock’s, and see what they have to say about what Macy’s can and can’t do, hmmm?
Marshall Field has move out of Houston, at least the Galleria. Target is more a discount chain competing against K-mart and Walmart. Marshall Field is upscale, or so I thought. A Target being re-named “Marshall Field’s’” would cheapen the MF name, and I still would prefer a Target.
Sorry! I should’ve been more clear - by “department stores” I meant their 60-odd traditional stores, which previously were known as Daytons (Minneapolis), Hudsons (Detroit) and Marshall Field (Chicago). The Target stores aren’t being changed.
I hadn’t known there’d been a Marshall Field in Houston!
In Chicago, it seems that, since the Dayton Hudson Fields merger mania. Marshall Fields has gotten significantly worse. Their products are still good, but the stores seem more crowded and service is worse. Fields used to have great customer relations, but now it seems to be headed towards the middle of the road.
Target on the other hand seems MUCH better. My memories of Target when I was younger was a pretty crappy place. Now, we shop there quite a bit.
I guess having 2 kids means shopping at Fields less and Target more.
