Macy's to close downtown St. Louis store

On Monday, Macy’s said it will close the store this summer, ending a century of department store history at the Railway Exchange Building.

The company announced the closure barely two years after shrinking and remodeling the store, once the flagship of the Famous-Barr chain.

At the time, Macy’s officials said they intended to reposition the store to better serve downtown residents, office workers and tourists.

Peter Sachse, Macy’s chief stores officer, said in a statement that the company had tried to make the store a success.

“We have worked hard to reinvigorate our downtown business,” he said. “But unfortunately, the level of customer activity we see no longer justifies keeping the store open.”

The loss of a convenient place to shop on lunch hours was the regret that several shoppers had upon learning of the closure, coming sometime in August.

“I’m kind of sad it’s closing because it gives you something to do during lunchtime,” Donna Kloustermeyer of O’Fallon, Ill., said early Monday afternoon as she shopped for women’s clothing.

Lori and Jeff Mitchell, of Fenton, browsing in the housewares department, said they will miss having a place to shop near their employer, law firm Bryan Cave.

“Plus, if your boss forgets secretary’s day, they could always go get a Macy’s gift card,” Lori Mitchell said.

Yet, the store’s struggle was underscored by the fact that Macy’s employees outnumbered customers in several departments on Monday afternoon.

The departure of Macy’s will be a blow to downtown retailing, which languishes despite downtown’s growing number of residents and a stable population of office workers.

Largely unsuccessful was the effort by the Partnership for Downtown St. Louis, which a decade ago recruited home décor, furniture and clothing shops. Most later closed or relocated to other parts of the region. Officials blamed the losses on the recession and the fact that many of those stores were blocks apart.

Last fall, the Collective at MX opened on Washington Avenue. The idea was to try to avoid previous shortcomings by putting outlets of unique St. Louis retailers under one roof. The boutique has about 50 vendors.

“I think there’s safety in numbers,” said Nicole Benoist, the Collective’s managing director. “So the more businesses we have downtown, the more we all thrive.”

But she added that the downtown department store has become a dated concept.

“There are so few downtown department stores left” in many cities, she said. “So we’ve held on a lot longer than most other downtowns have.”

Downtown Macy’s stores are disappearing in other cities, too. In January, the Cincinnati-based retailer said it would close downtown locations in St. Paul, Minn.; Honolulu and Houston.

ONCE BIGGEST IN CITY

When the Railway Exchange opened in 1913, the 21-story white terra cotta building was the city’s largest commercial and office structure, with 31 acres of floor space, according to its successful nomination to the National Register of Historic Places. The Famous-Barr store once filled 10 floors. Famous-Barr Co., later May Department Stores, had its offices on the upper floors, along with the Wabash Railway.

Macy’s departure will end a century of department store use in the building and leave a full city block of empty retail space in the middle of downtown. The company will honor the five-year lease it signed in 2010.

Kevin Farrell, the Downtown Partnership’s senior director of economic and housing development, said the organization is disappointed but not surprised by the St. Louis closure. For most small to midsize cities, the “old model” of 150,000- to 200,000-square-foot downtown department stores “is just not viable today,” he said.

“Ten years ago this would have been a much bigger blow to downtown,” he added. “But we have had over $5 billion invested downtown in that time. Our population continues to grow.”

Macy’s said the final clearance sale at the downtown store will begin June 2 and last about 10 weeks.

The company is clearing out of the Railway Exchange Building entirely. In addition to closing the store in the building’s three lower floors, Macy’s is relocating about 100 corporate employees from two upper floors to a company office in Earth City. Macy’s said the downtown store’s 94 employees, about 40 fewer than when the store was remodeled in 2011, might be offered jobs in other stores.

REDEVELOPING BUILDING

Mayor Francis Slay’s representatives began meeting with Macy’s officials in January to try to devise a way to keep the store open, the mayor’s spokeswoman said. Slay said in a statement that the announcement by Macy’s on Monday was “neither unexpected nor tragic.”

“While it has been great having one of the remaining few downtown department stores in the country, we all knew that overall retail shopping trends meant that its days in downtown St. Louis were numbered,” the mayor said. “We’ll miss the people and the jobs, but the store has not been a major contributor for years.”

Representatives for Slay and the Downtown Partnership said they will work with the Railway Exchange’s owner to refill the space Macy’s will vacate.

Developer Rick Yackey and Clayton-based Bruce Development bought the Railway Exchange for $18.5 million in 2010. They announced an ambitious $112 million renovation of the entire building. The city approved up to $27.8 million in tax-increment financing, plus money from a community improvement district and a transportation development district.

Even with Macy’s occupying five floors of store space and offices, the Railway Exchange is largely vacant. Among the few other tenants is the Downtown T-REx technology incubator.

While the Macy’s store won’t close until August, downtown backers are already talking about what they would like to have as a replacement.

“My dream would be a huge IKEA with amazing parking underneath,” Benoist said. “But that’s not going to happen.”

Lisa Brown and Kavita Kumar of the Post-Dispatch contributed to this report.