Currently located in one-third the space across Fifth Avenue at Rainier Square, Brooks Brothers signed its lease for the Skinner Building space in November. Eddie Bauer is vacating 30,000 sf in the Skinner Building this week in favor of a much smaller space in nearby Pacific Place, clearing the way for Brooks Brothers to begin construction.
Built in 1910 and managed by locally based Unico Properties, The Skinner Building is an eight-story mixed-use building that is home to the 5th Avenue Theatre and a number of higher-end retailers including Escada, St. Johns Boutique, Silberman/Brown Stationers and Nancy Meyer Fine Lingerie.
Founded in 1818 in New York City, Brooks Brothers has been Downtown since 1977 and in the Unico portfolio for six years. At a cost of about $3 million, its new Downtown store will feature an interior of polished mahogany and leather and an expanded line of high-end clothing for men, women and boys. Brooks Brothers will be paying a blended lease rate in the $60s per sf per year. Unico is picking up about one-third of the tenant improvement costs.
Unico says Brooks Brothers move will add a distinguished anchor to Unico's growing collection of upscale retail shops along "Upper Fifth," Unico's name for the promenade on Fifth Avenue between Union and University streets. Across Fifth Avenue from the Skinner Building are Alexandria Rosoff Jewels and Rare Finds and Neuhaus Chocolates. In May, they will be joined by Louis Vuitton, which last fall renewed and nearly doubled its leasehold at the corner of Fifth Avenue and University Street, across from the posh Olympic Hotel. The French purveyor of luxury leather goods and accessories is spending $3 million to build out the 3,270-sf space and will pay a lease rate in the $70s per sf upon its completion in May. While the work is underway, Louis Vuitton is operating out of the former Mephisto space in the Skinner Building.
And with expectations of attracting even more high-end merchants, Unico is adding more retail opportunities along "Upper Fifth" by fronting the IBM Building at Fifth and University, caddy corner from the Louis Vuitton space, with two 2,500- to 3,000-sf storefronts. Construction of the new retail complex will begin once a signature retail tenant is secured.
Eddie Bauer, meanwhile, is scheduled to open up March 3 at its new location on the second level of enclosed vertical mall Pacific Place, in the former Tommy Hilfiger space. At about 8,000 sf, the space is about 25% of the space it is vacating in the Skinner Building, where it had been since 1979. Since its parent company, Downers Grove, IL-based Spiegel, filed for bankruptcy protection last March, Eddie Bauer had closed dozens of stores by the end of 2003 and planned to close more in early 2004. As well, the company recently won court approval to open 17 new stores in 2004, including Pacific Place and Alderwood Mall in Lynwood, WA.
Earlier this month, the Spiegel Group said that comparable-store sales for its Eddie Bauer division decreased 7% for the four-week period ended Jan. 31, 2004, compared to the same period last year. Net sales for January include $3.8 million in liquidation sales resulting from the sale and transfer of inventory in early January to an independent liquidator in conjunction with the closing of 29 Eddie Bauer stores.
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