M Macys Inc

Keiko Morris 

Macy's Inc. is bringing together the past and the present in a $100 million renovation of its store in downtown Brooklyn.

The retailer will take three years to revamp the building at 422 Fulton St., which was built in 1873 and expanded in 1929 and 1947. The store will remain open during the makeover, and demolition will start in a few weeks.

The overhaul will add fluted columns and coffered ceilings on the first floor, along with arched metal-and-glass canopies over the Fulton Street entrances, as nods to an earlier era, according to Steven Derwoed, Macy's senior vice president of store design and merchandising.

Escalators flanked by large video and light-box screens displaying fashion images and scenes of Brooklyn neighborhoods will lend a modern touch, he said.

"It becomes important to blend that sense of history with the very modern, to be contemporary," Mr. Derwoed said. "In our mind, that is what Brooklyn is today, and that's what New York is today. It's a meshing of what's old and new."

The revamp will cover the first four floors and lower level of the building, which has 11 floors plus a basement and a subbasement. In late January, Macy's sold the remaining upper floors and air rights for the site as well as a parking garage on Hoyt Street to real-estate company Tishman Speyer. The $270 million deal will finance the renovation, which will shrink the store size from about 378,000 square feet to about 278,000 square feet.

A more efficient use of space allowed for the reduction, Mr. Derwoed said. Even with less space, he said, the store will have a better selection of brands.

Like other publicly traded retailers, Macy's is under pressure to tap the value of its real estate. The sustained growth of online shopping has forced many retailers to shrink their brick-and-mortar store size and figure out ways to boost per-square-foot sales in a smaller space, said Robin Lewis, chief executive of The Robin Report, a retail-strategy publication.

But Macy's executives say the renovation will establish an "A" level location for existing "underserved" customers as well as newcomers drawn to the neighborhood by the residential construction boom of the past several years.

A key aim of the makeover, designed by Macy's and its consultant FRCH Design Worldwide, is to align all the floors of the store, which is an amalgam of additions built in different styles over the decades. Built in 1873, the original ornate building was designed in the Second Empire style. About a decade later, the building became the flagship for department store Wechsler & Abraham, forerunner to the well-known chain Abraham & Straus.

The building has had at least two expansions, both in the art deco style. The one in 1929 was on Fulton Street; the one in 1947 was on Livingston Street. The differences in height between the additions are several feet, disrupting the natural flow of shoppers, said Mr. Derwoed.

"We tried as much as possible to eliminate the nooks and crannies and the complexity of the floor today," Mr. Derwoed said.

New features such as fluted gypsum columns will establish a visual link to the store's past, Mr. Derwoed said. The columns anchor coffered ceilings, establishing a framework of sunken square boxes for modern lighting and mechanical systems.

Aiming for grandeur and "gravitas," the design calls for the arches above each of the two Fulton Street entrances to be raised, and glass added above the doors in addition to new canopies, Mr. Derwoed said. Windows that have been sealed off and blacked out along Fulton and Livingston streets will be reopened.

Macy's describes the revamp as a transformation of the store into "a modern fashion epicenter" for Brooklyn. Department-store historians, however, expect the renovated building only vaguely to resemble the downtown department store in its glory days of the early 20th century.

Still, Macy's is aiming to create a sense of drama, an approach used by retailers throughout the decades. Video screens on the ground floor and 8- by 13-foot light boxes on the upper floors will show Brooklyn images -- some familiar and others less so, Mr. Derwoed said.

"Probably 90% of people will take the escalator, so this becomes the front door to every floor," Mr. Derwoed said. "As such, we are trying to create a dynamic experience in that vertical transportation moment."

Write to Keiko Morris at Keiko.Morris@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

April 06, 2016 20:58 ET (00:58 GMT)

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