Lord & Taylor is mulling over a plan to redevelop its 103-year-old Fifth Avenue flagship store into an office-and-residential tower with room for the retailer’s business at the base.
The plan would preserve the 11-story building at 424 Fifth Avenue while constructing a glass-and-steel skyscraper above, the New York Post reported.
Details were scant, but real estate insiders pointed out that nearby towers stretch 60 stories or higher.
Department store tycoon and Hudson’s Bay Company executive chairman Richard Baker is driving the talks. He bought the Saks Fifth Avenue chain in 2013 for $2.9 billion, including its landmark Fifth Avenue location. That property was valued the next year at $3.7 billion.
Baker acquired Lord & Taylor in 2008 with his purchase of Hudson’s Bay, and at the time said the Fifth Avenue flagship was “too large at that location” and talked about possibly redeveloping the site.
But Lord & Taylor is spending tens of millions of dollars to renovate stores in Stamford, Connecticut and Manhasset in Long Island. The company just completed a $12 million renovation to the fifth floor of its Manhattan location, and expects to spend another $250 million renovating the property. [NYP] – Rich Bockmann