Cityplanner

Downtown Greenville and downtown Asheville do have a department store: Mast, which does very well, at least in Greenville. I agree with you. Probably part of department stores’ problems today are due to the fact that almost all of them are only in malls. Target is blanketing NYC and probably other cities with small (12,000 to up to 55,000 sf) stores, and there are so many of them that everyone in Manhattan will soon be less than a mile from one and a lot of people will be half a mile or less from one. Nordstrom has a few small locations, too. Surely convenient locations help build sales. I found it odd that there is no centrally-located department store in Charlotte. After a long day at work I never wanted to trek from uptown to SouthPark- it’s a 20-minute drive.

Yes, it was always packed for lunch. At least in the 1990s. It wasn’t that nice of a building; maybe if it were more elegant or architecturally interesting that might have helped. What stores were there when it first opened (other than the food court)? By the ‘90s it was just office space and a food court.

Surely Wyche can move to Class A office space. Historically it has been a very high-quality firm, historically requiring lofty academic credentials to be employed there. Comparable firms would be in the best office building in town.

Greyhound has also launched new service from Greenville.

Looks like Belk is likely filing for bankruptcy (just do a news search). I expect the Haywood store to be safe, but how about the small-town ones? Or maybe the small-town ones are safer? Unfortunate, as Belk is certainly a Southern institution. I bought some things online from Belk a few months ago and was impressed with the prices and selection.

Great suggestions. I'd say that downtown Greenville has a pretty good amount of retail, and particularly for a city of this size, and the stores are all pretty nice, too.

Who's in charge of retail leasing downtown- presumably brokers for each building individually? Whoever it is, downtown has certainly landed some high-profile stores; Anthropologie and Lululemon and some others are certainly in-demand, and they likely require good demographics. If downtown got those stores, it can certainly get other high-profile ones.

Thanks, good to know. I wonder if downtown could court brick-and-mortar locations that online companies are starting to set up--e.g., an Amazon 4-Star store, a Warby Parker, a Bonobos, etc. That would certainly differentiate it from Haywood. I also wonder who's in charge of leasing in these spaces downtown, and who got these nice stores to come downtown in the first place. Whoever that was did a good job the first time and hopefully can work those connections again.

Interesting- so the Gaffney location closed, and then re-opened? I guess if Simon views Brooks Brothers as simply a space-filler, but running a business with locations that aren't profitable enough to remain open on normal terms doesn't seem like a great move over the long run. I looked at the Gaffney outlet mall map and it looks to be about 40% vacant. Maybe someone should build an outlet mall in Greenville County and put the Gaffney outlets out of their misery.

Great points. Agreed. And losing a downtown Nordstrom is much more painful than losing a Brooks Brothers or Hermes.

I Googled Brooks Brothers and see that originally the Gaffney outlet store was going to close and the Greenville store was to remain open. (The Asheville store also closed.) But then once Simon (which owns the Gaffney outlets) bought Brooks Brothers, the Gaffney outlet remained open and the Greenville store closed. I'm thinking that Simon closed a decently-performing store (in Greenville) in order to keep a space filled at its Gaffney outlet. Not cool.

Wow, when I went to Short Pump and Stony Point about 15 years ago, Short Pump was definitely "the" mall (very lively). You could tell even then that Stony Point wasn't drawing a lot of traffic, but it was beautiful, and I hoped that the high price point of its stores allowed it to perform well even with few customers.

True, and it was a self-inflicted wound. Lord & Taylor was ALWAYS on sale, even though I would have paid more. I hope that the brand is revived to have physical stores again. I like Nordstrom, but the other high-end department stores just don't do it for me; I particularly dislike Neiman Marcus after being lectured about how my MasterCard wasn't good enough to be accepted there, 10+ years ago.

Lord & Taylor would have been a great anchor for SouthPark: beautiful store and beautiful clothes; Nordstrom/Bloomingdale's clothes at Target prices.

Since the start of the year always brings store closings, what will close at Stony Point Fashion Park this year, and when will Saks close?

When is Saks Fifth Avenue going to give up on Triangle Town Center and move to Crabtree? I was looking at the TTC directory and it reminded me of Eastland Mall in Charlotte, but with a Saks Fifth Avenue. Certainly a far cry from the nice mall I remember visiting in about 2006 or 2007. Or will Saks just close?

Sad to see businesses closing. Port City Java is still listed on the chain's website. I've read numerous stories of other Brooks Brothers locations closing and being vacated, but then reopening. So these seem like situations in which the locations could spring back to life. In any event, I hope that the owners of the ONE building are actively marketing the space (perhaps to one of the other higher-end clothing chains, since it's a beautiful store that could easily be turned into another higher-end store). I also hope that the powers that be are working to lure additional destination retail to downtown; as long as the Brooks Brothers closing is an isolated one, not tied to the performance of downtown overall, I guess I can deal with it, although I really liked it. I wonder what other chains could be prospects for downtown. Urban Outfitters? Macy's new small-format chain? H&M?

Thanks- Billy Reid was the store I was thinking of. I looked it up online and there are still a bunch of Billy Reid stores around, including around the Southeast. There are plenty of Hermes locations that do fine. These 2 examples make me wonder why they (and other high-end retailers) didn't work out at SouthPark--they seem to do fine elsewhere. But if Gucci just opened, clearly it looked at the information it had, which I would think would have included sales figures from other luxury stores at SouthPark, and figured that it could make money.

Does anyone else find it odd that luxury stores come and go at SouthPark? I haven't been to that mall in ages, but there was a Polo store, Hermes, another high-end men's store next to Neiman Marcus and plenty of others--even nicer stores such as Frontgate--that are long-gone. Years ago there was a Brooks Brothers near Belk. All long-gone. Those are certainly desirable stores that I'd think Simon would really want to keep--particularly Hermes. I was upset over the Brooks Brothers in Greenville closing, but then I remembered the revolving door of nicer stores at SouthPark; losing one doesn't indicate anything about the mall's future prospects to attract more.

Thanks for the article. Other Brooks Brothers locations in the Carolinas DID close, such as at least one in Charlotte, at Northlake.

Agreed. I hope that it doesn't reflect on downtown overall. It's a prime location and hopefully someone new will come there. It's such a beautiful space. For what it's worth, even the flagship in midtown Manhattan closed, as did plenty of locations in high-end areas. If you see me posting about liking a store, rest assured that it will close. Parisian, Harold's at Greenville Mall, Lord & Taylor and now Brooks Brothers--if I like, it goes out of business.

Anchor store. That could be anything from a Target to an Apple Store. Anything to draw crowds.

I would assume that the vacancies are largely locally-owned stores and restaurants that didn't have deep enough pockets to make it through Covid-19, plus regular turnover. As long as the national/regional chains stay downtown, this shouldn't be anything to worry about, but (1) downtown still needs another large anchor store and (2) the office vacancy rate plus the slew of hotels which now must reflect significant overbuilding ought to be cause for concern.

Thank you very much for posting this. That's a great picture of the West Washington Street lobby. It looks to be in better shape than when I walked through the building.

That's certainly a strong vote of confidence in the downtown restaurant market. I thought that hotel restaurants often lose money and so hotel owners try to avoid having them if possible.