CT looks to fill closed Lord + Taylor stores
The Lord + Taylor era has ended in Connecticut. Now comes the challenge of filling hundreds of thousands of square feet vacated by the oldest department-store chain in the country.
Last Saturday marked the final day of business at Lord + Taylor’s stores in Stamford and at the Westfield Trumbull mall, after the closing at the end of December of its stores at Danbury Fair mall and Westfarms mall in Farmington. The Stamford and Farmington locations are being marketed for potential redevelopment for office space, while the future of the Danbury and Trumbull sites appears less clear.
“Both enterprises and employees require spaces that meet their needs today and allow for future evolution,” commercial real estate firm CBRE, which is marketing the Stamford and Farmington properties, says on the websites promoting its York Factory workspace concept for those locations. “York Factory is created for enterprises seeking a solution for the modern workforce. Our highly amenitized and inspiring workspaces are
designed to optimize health, happiness and productivity.”
Search underway for successors
Lord + Taylor has vacated an approximately 160,000-square-foot standalone building at 110 High Ridge Road in Stamford and an approximately 117,000 square-foot box at Westfield Trumbull. It had opened the Stamford store in 1969 and the Trumbull establishment in 1992.
It occupied about 120,000 square feet at Westfarms, and it had operated there since 1983. Its nearly 80,000-square-foot store at Danbury had been in business since 1991.
Despite the mass migration of office workers to remote setups in the past year in response to the coronavirus pandemic, CBRE appears to be anticipating that the office market will eventually recover.
Its York Factory websites list a number of single-tenant and multi-tenant workspace options. The websites’ renderings show large and bright open-floor layouts, evoking the type of office space that has become popular in recent years.
“York Factory’s turnkey designs are built to
maximize productivity, empowering employees to choose how and where they work best,” it also says on the websites. “York Factory can provide varying levels of tenant fit out, amenities and services depending on local market demand and individual tenant preferences. Each site represents a potential bespoke opportunity for a tenant.”
Messages left for Hudson’s Bay Co., which controls the Lord + Taylor properties in Connecticut and the nearly three-dozen other Lord + Taylor sites in the U.S., were not returned.
Hudson’s Bay sold Lord + Taylor to rentalclothing company Le Tote in 2019, but it has kept those department stores in its real estate portfolio through ownership and ground-lease arrangements.
Plans for the Danbury and Trumbull sites have been less publicized. Macerich, the owner of Danbury Fair, and Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield, the owner of Westfield Trumbull, declined to comment for this article.
Demise of a retail powerhouse
Only a few years ago, Lord + Taylor officials had envisioned many more years of operating in the Nutmeg State.
In late 2016, Lord + Taylor completed a nearly two-year renovation of the Stamford property.
But amid the ongoing rise of e-commerce, the 1826-founded business started to struggle long before the pandemic struck.
In January 2019, Lord + Taylor shuttered its flagship store in Manhattan, ending a 104-year run for the midtown establishment. The property was sold for $850 million to co-working firm WeWork and partner Rhone Capital.
Its travails contributed to Hudson’s Bay’s decision later in 2019 to sell the business to Le Tote.
The outbreak of COVID-19 dashed hopes of a revival for Lord + Taylor and many other retail companies.
Last August, Lord + Taylor and Le Tote filed for bankruptcy. Later that month, Lord + Taylor announced that it would shut down all 38 of its locations.
To clear out inventory, the stores held closing sales in the following months. By their last days, the stores were stripped bare, with only a smattering of merchandise still on display.
About 150 Lord + Taylor employees in Connecticut would be laid off, Le Tote told the labor department last October. The job cuts were expected to include 58 positions in Stamford, 40 in Trumbull, 28 in Danbury and 24 in Farmington. Affected employees were not unionized.