The closing of the State Street branch of famed Chicago retailer Carson Pirie Scott is being lamented by residents, but it frees up 265,000 square-feet of retail space that is being shopped to high-end retailers that might include Apple. The area is already home to Macy’s (recently renamed from Marshall Field’s) and other old-name stores, and its population is growing from condo and apartment developments. There have been rumors that Apple was interested in an under-construction development at 108 N. State St., just a block from Carson’s historic building. But Carson’s departure from the 1904-vintage building by March 2007 could open up space sooner. The location would balance out Apple’s coverage in downtown Chicago, with the North Michigan Avenue store situated on the city’s near-north side.
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I live in the suburbs, but am currently attending college and live less than a mile south of Carsons, Sears, 108 North State Street, and MARSHALL FIELD’S (not Macy’s) and have some extra bits to add to this. From the local NBC affiliate, NBC5’s website, they reported several strange quotes, like this one “A Bon-Ton stores spokesman said the owner of the landmark building, Joseph Freed & Associates, planned to redevelop the site. Carson’s was offered incentives to vacate the location, the representative said.” They were offered incentives to leave a 1 million square foot building? That sounds slightly less puzzling when you read this quote from Paul Fitzpatrick, managing director of Joseph Freed & Associates. “National and international tenants have expressed interest in leasing space in this historic property, and now we can pursue these opportunities.” Maybe Apple?
You can read the whole story here with several other quotes that may point to an apple location coming soon. One last thing to note, the lower floor of Carson’s, where the retail space will be put, is standard department store windows, but aren’t floor to ceiling, they include a lot of ornamental metalwork which is part of what makes the 100+ year old building a landmark, so Apple would need to work around that and not simply demolish it.
I see it happening at the 108 N. State Street site. Too much is unknown about the Carson’s development plan. Further, the 108 site is more modern and be less of a burden for getting permits to change the look of a landmark.
I can see 108 because of it being new, easy to taylor a space for them, but it’s SO far away from being done. I walked by there two, three weeks ago and it was still a hole in the ground with nothing vertical being built. Also, most of the construction right now is for the CBS 2 studio that’s going at the corner of Washington and Dearborn. I don’t know, but well see where apple places. Unfortunate that it’s taking so long, it amy not even open before I’m done with college, and I’m just a freshman right now.
-Brian
I think opening up another store in downtown Chicago is STUPID. The downtown area isn’t large enough to scratch your head and say, “Wow.. I don’t want to travel the seven blocks north to NMA.” The Chicago-Land area has a large number of Apple Stores and I feel that adding another is going to severly take away from the others.
Apple Stores are destinations - they shouldn’t be one on every block like Walgreen’s.
Yes, actually, Apple has several pairs of stores within a mile of one another (in Orlando, Palo Alto, and soon NYC). Having lugged several computers from my Loop office over to NMA, and tried to squeeze a visit into lunch hour (impossible), I’d certainly appreciate having something closer. Plenty of retailers know that State and Michigan serve almost entirely different markets, which is why they do good business at both locations: Crate & Barrel’s Michigan and Clybourn locations are among its busiest, and it had signed a lease at Block 37 under a prior proposal. (It also runs 150 stores, like Apple, so you can’t accuse them of oversaturation.)
Chicago, with five Apple Stores, is actually under-Apple-d relative to other large metro areas; Washington-Baltimore (8), the Bay Area (11), and Boston (6) each have millions fewer people but more Apple Stores.
There are alot of art schools in this area, too…