PACKING ITS BAGS Downtown stalwart Specialty Luggage set to close in mid-July; factory to move to Wilkinsburg
Downtown’s only luggage store is packing up for good.
After 75 years in business in the Golden Triangle, Specialty Luggage at 915 Liberty Ave. will close in mid-July after a liquidation sale.
Owner Jeff Izenson decided to shutter the store when the opportunity arose to sell the building. With traditional retail getting tougher given the competition from online sales, Mr. Izenson figured it was time to get out.
“Retail’s not what it was,” he said. “I don’t care what you’re selling. If your name’s not Amazon, it’s not what it was.”
A lot of the brands Mr. Izenson carries sell directly to customers online or have their own stores, he said, making it even harder to compete.
“Retail’s tough. It’s really tough Downtown, and the opportunity came up to sell the building.” he said. “It’s time.”
Specialty Luggage has been in business at 915 Liberty since the 1970s, when Mr. Izenson’s father bought the building, which dates to 1891.
Before that, the luggage store was located at 951 Liberty and at Smithfield Street and Seventh Avenue, where it got its start in 1944, thanks to Mr. Izenson’s grandfather Morris, who started the business with his brothers Nathan and Sam.
In addition to closing the store, Mr. Izenson will be relocating a factory that operates inside the building to a warehouse in Wilkinsburg.
The factory, he said, manufactures industrial leather products and “oddball stuff” like a battery cover for Porsches.
Specialty Luggage’s Waterworks Mall store in Fox Chapel will remain open.
In Downtown, the growing residential population “kept us here longer because business was OK,” Mr. Izenson said.
In fact, the two stores together last year had their second-best year since 2000. But Mr. Izenson believes that was an aberration.
“It’s time to sell the building,” he said. “I’ve been waiting on customers for 40 years. That’s a long shelf life.”
Mr. Izenson wouldn’t name the buyer for the eight-story building. He said the new owner’s goal is to convert it into condominiums. He expects to finalize the sale in July.
John Valentine, executive director of the Pittsburgh Downtown Community Development Corp., said an Army-Navy store next to Specialty Luggage also has closed and Minuteman Press has relocated to the North Side.
But Mr. Valentine doesn’t see that sequence of events as a symptom of broader problems Downtown. “I still believe Downtown is a strong neighborhood,” he said.