Lord & Taylor has announced it will rent out about a quarter of its building on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan.
From racks and racks of glam clothes, make-up and shoes to — rows and rows of laptops?
Lord & Taylor has announced it will rent out about a quarter of its building on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. The company said it will operate “a pared-down department store” in the space and WeWork, a company that creates “collaborative workspaces” outside of traditional office enviornments, will use the rest of the building for its global headquarters and to lease shared office space to its customers. The redesign is expected after Christmas 2018.
One factor behind the sale? The retail company hasn’t been able to adapt to younger buyers’ penchant for buying online.
“In selling its Italian Renaissance-style building to a WeWork joint venture for $850 million, Lord & Taylor and Hudson’s Bay are acknowledging that even the grand physical shopping spaces of old are now worth more as office space catering to millennials after Christmas of 2018,” write Michael J. de la Merced and Michael Corkery for The New York Times.
“The department store really is a dinosaur,” Mark A. Cohen, the director of retail studies at Columbia Business School, told the Times. “And its demise is ongoing.”
