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Another landmark lost
Friday, Aug 25, 2006 - Posted by Rich Miller This sucks. Department store operator Bon-Ton Stores Inc. said today it is closing its Carson Pirie Scott store on Chicago’s State Street. I was in Carson’s a few weeks ago and it was just about empty. I browsed the men’s suit section, which covers thousands of square feet, for almost an hour and there were no other customers around. (By the way, I didn’t buy anything because even with all those clothes nothing really caught my eye.) That said, I can’t help but wonder who owns the building and what the dastardly person has planned. UPDATE: More from Crain’s: Mr. Bergren said the current owner is working on “very exciting plans for the Carson Pirie Scott building and we think the city and people of Chicago will agree.†· More from the AP: The building — with 1 million square feet — is owned by Joseph Freed and Associates, which has been renovating it in recent years — including extensive work on the terra cotta facades and the ornate cornice at the corner of State Street and Madison Avenue.
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- Downtown Mike - Friday, Aug 25, 06 @ 10:25 am:
Is this the first victim of the Big Box law?
- Skeeter - Friday, Aug 25, 06 @ 10:26 am:
Interesting in light of Natarus’s voicemail to Zorn.
So much for the great shape of the 42nd.
- Leroy - Friday, Aug 25, 06 @ 10:50 am:
Skeeter - Carson’s is on State. Natarus is credited with creating *Michigan* Avenue. I don’t know which member of the Chicago ruiling class bestowed State upon us, maybe Mayor Daley or his father.
- Niles Township - Friday, Aug 25, 06 @ 10:52 am:
Will this be another major architectual loss for Chicago? I hope the building owner doesn’t see a bland condo building in place of this stately building as way to make quick $.
- anonymous - Friday, Aug 25, 06 @ 10:54 am:
it makes me sick too. then again I still haven’t gotten over the Marshall Fields thing. shopping in Chicago won’t be the same
- Skeeter - Friday, Aug 25, 06 @ 10:58 am:
Leroy,
The full Natarus voicemail included a reference to his great work on the Planning Commission.
He took specific credit for Michigan Ave., but also claimed credit for the Commission work.
Ultimately, Natarus claims to do a great job, but in 20 years we’ve lost local control of Marshall Field’s, we’ve had the State Street Mall and the reversal, we’ve had the blight of ugly buildings on North Michigan and generally of buildings north of the river and south of North Ave., and now we lose Carson’s.
That is not much of a record for the Planning Commission and its impact on the 42nd.
- Skidmore Row - Friday, Aug 25, 06 @ 11:10 am:
The exterior of the building was just restored. It looks great. Having recently shopped there, I’m not surprised by the announcement. No one was there. There wasn’t much of interest. Rich Miller’s experience conforms to my own. It would make a wonderful casino space, perhaps….
- Wumpus - Friday, Aug 25, 06 @ 11:15 am:
Skeet, how can you blame him for the Field loss (who cares?) People in Chicago look like Rubes comoplaining about a change in name
- BuckTurgidson - Friday, Aug 25, 06 @ 11:46 am:
No, Wumpus, people would look like rubes giggling over getting Macy’s.
Heck, Macy’s will sell the same things as Field’s, but it’s the idea of having a local tie. One by one, it’s as if the lords of coroprate homogeny are demolishing anything unique.
They should go to the front of the Merchandise Mart and with great symbolism and fanfare lop off the giant heads and dump them into the river below: Montgomery Ward…Frank Woolworth…Aaron Montgomery Ward…Marshall Field…
Who’s next?
- Skeeter - Friday, Aug 25, 06 @ 11:49 am:
Wumpus,
I don’t care about “Macy’s.”
I care about the loss of control when the Field people sold out a few years ago [to the Dayton Hudson people I believe. It has changed hands a few times since then]. That happened under Natarus.
I care about corporate leadership in Chicago.
- BuckTurgidson - Friday, Aug 25, 06 @ 11:49 am:
And by the way, the Carson Pirie Scott building was designed by Louis Sullivan. If they haven’t done so already, they should sprint to give it landmark status.
- Bubs - Friday, Aug 25, 06 @ 11:55 am:
I smell high rise luxury condos, with bland, faceless retail on the first floor.
- Schiznitz - Friday, Aug 25, 06 @ 1:46 pm:
That particular Carsons has been falling apart for years. It is time someone pulled the plug and put it out of its misery.
You were in there for an hour and couldn’t find anything. In a Carsons! That is terrible.
Let some new blood invigorate the area. I hope this isn’t part of a long slow death to the business community from the enormous anti-business taxes in Cook County.
I just saw a stat that there are now 300,000 less workers in the loop than a decade ago.
Cook County is a mess.
- Jennifer - Friday, Aug 25, 06 @ 2:12 pm:
I fell down the steps there a few years ago. Not one sales clerk could walk away from their private chatter between each other to step over to inquire to if I was injured. I vowed to never step in the store again.
- VanillaMan - Friday, Aug 25, 06 @ 2:24 pm:
What is so unfortunate is seeing nothing replacing these former retail giants. Chicago went from a city on the make, to a city living on nostalgia.
If Carsons and Fields declined 100 years ago, they would have been immediately replaced by new giants. Chicago ripped itself and remodeled the Loop every 20 years during the 20th Century. Few buildings were sacred. Chicago at that time looked to the future, not the past.
Today, Chicago fights against the innovators it should be welcoming. Today, change is seen in Chicago as bad. Instead of a city that works, Chicago has become a city that wants to retire.
Chicago is turning into a museum. A place visitors come to marvel at it’s past. A trip to the top of it’s 30 year old skyscrapers is still on the must-see lists. Next year, you will be able to get a housing unit in a building that used to call the shots around the retail world. And that is in a nutshell the sort of future Chicago’s current leadership imagines.
- taxmandan - Friday, Aug 25, 06 @ 2:31 pm:
Congratulations to the Chicago City Council. There is now one less “Big Box†you have to worry about. There is nothing better than an unpredictable business climate to stimulate the economy.
- Skeeter - Friday, Aug 25, 06 @ 2:40 pm:
Vanilla,
“A place visitors come to marvel at it’s past.”
You mean like Paris, London, Rome, New York . . .
I would hate if Chicago joined those sorry places.
Read some history. Chicago is one of the great places for architecture in the world. Yes, we do want to preserve it.
- So-Called "Austin Mayor" - Friday, Aug 25, 06 @ 3:53 pm:
According to the Neighborhood Capital Budget Group site, the Central Loop TIF spent five-and-a-half million dollars to “Rehab interior & facade of Carson Pirie Scott & Haskell-Barker-Atwater buildings, develop 300,000 SF office space & upgrade mech. systems.” http://tinyurl.com/qteu8
Are Chicago taxpayers financing this type of history destruction through TIFs? Does anyone on this board have any insight — or am I gonna have to wait until Ben Joravsky writes about this? http://tinyurl.com/la8oc
- BuckTurgidson - Friday, Aug 25, 06 @ 4:16 pm:
So, the geniuses wishing to forecast the demise of Chicago retail might consider reading the entire article. To wit:
The retailer’s owner said it has no plans to close any of its other 25 Carson’s department stores or five furniture stores in the Chicago area. It is also looking at new sites for Carson’s on the Near North and Near South Sides of the city.
- BuckTurgidson - Friday, Aug 25, 06 @ 4:21 pm:
Well, there’s mistaken. And there’s not quite right. Then there’s Vanilla Wrong:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/24/AR2006062400509.html
Since 2000, no fewer than 40 buildings at least 50 stories high have been built, are under construction or are being planned. It’s a surge in high-rise construction that hasn’t been seen here since the 1960s and 1970s when the Sears Tower, John Hancock Center and other buildings helped give the city one of the most distinctive skylines in the world.
- Nordie Fan - Friday, Aug 25, 06 @ 6:49 pm:
Who cares. Everyone knows that Nordstrom is THE place to be.
Most of these large department stores are in trouble, because there’s nothing to differentiate one from the other. So, who is left standing? Nordstrom, because they refused to give up on those old school values where they treat the customer as king and queen.
Can ya tell I used to work for them? lol
Forget the rest! Nordies is the best.
- Disgusted - Friday, Aug 25, 06 @ 8:05 pm:
If my historical mind remembers rightly, Carson’s did get on the national historical registry because of its Louie Sullivan metal work on the outside. It’s outstanding.
- Reddbyrd - Saturday, Aug 26, 06 @ 9:09 am:
Nordie Fan is right on….plus the store on N. Mich has many sales folks (mostly female)
Rich you should be shopping there with your vast wealth.
Carsons has not had much to buy since the early ’90s It will make for some nice condos unless the sames aliens who captured Soldier Field grab it for an inland base.
- BuckTurgidson - Saturday, Aug 26, 06 @ 10:16 am:
Also:
http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/chi-0608200188aug20,1,5441474.story
Real estate experts confirm what has become increasingly apparent: There is a bona fide retail renaissance taking shape in the Loop, one of Chicago’s oldest and best-known destinations but one that was long ago left behind as other areas, especially north of the Chicago River, flourished with restaurants and shopping.
Thanks in large part to a $60-million investment to revive the theater district and $475 million spent to build Millennium Park, a record number of retailers and restaurants are moving into the Loop looking to benefit from the influx of tourists, residents and students who hang out downtown long after offices have closed.
“It’s definitely paid off,” said Allen Joffe, principal broker at Chicago-based Baum Realty Group Inc., a real estate firm tracking the Loop’s retail revival.
The Loop retail market posted a banner year in 2005, with 89 new leases signed, topping the previous record in 2004 of 60, according to an annual study from Baum Realty. That’s almost triple the 34 leases signed in 2003, Joffe said.
- zatoichi - Sunday, Aug 27, 06 @ 4:40 pm:
Sad to see Carsons go. Building really went down over the years. Never saw the types of crowds there that existed 30 years ago. Hate to see these changes but I am not the owner nor an investor and I realize they need some type of return. If there are 40 50 story buildings going up someone has faith and big bucks. Part of a change.