Nordstrom Signs On to Santa Monica Place
Nordstrom is moving to the seashore.
The high-end department store, which is based in Seattle, signed a letter of intent July 15 to open a 122,000-square-foot department store at the Santa Monica Place retail center in Santa Monica, Calif.
The three-level store is scheduled to open in the fall of 2010. It will be located next to the high-profile Third Street Promenade shopping district.
Nordstrom will be joining Macy’s at the Santa Monica mall. Macerich Co., a real estate investment trust (REIT) that specializes in shopping-center properties, is in the midst of remodeling the 1980-era closed mall into an open-air, three-story retail center that will feature rooftop dining. The new 550,000-square-foot shopping center is scheduled to open in the fall of 2009.
Retail analyst George Whalin said the letter of intent was a proverbial “win-win” situation for both Nordstrom and Macerich.
“The letter of intent is gold to a developer,” said Whalin, president of Retail Management Consultants in Carlsbad, Calif. “It is how they get other retailers to go to a mall.”
He also noted Santa Monica Place, located on Broadway between Third and Fourth streets, is placed in the middle of one of the Westside’s most popular retail areas.
Nordstrom also will build a new 138,000-square-foot store in the Los Cerritos Center in Cerritos, Calif. The two-level store will be constructed on the site of a former Robinsons-May store and is scheduled to open in the spring of 2010.
Nordstrom executives said the current investment in expansion will pay off, despite a tough economy. At a recent retail conference June 11 in New York, Nordstrom Chief Financial Officer Mike Koppel acknowledged a weak economy has affected the retailer’s sales. However, he expected the expansion to widen Nordstrom’s market share in California, according to a research note from Mark Exstein, a Credit Suisse analyst who covers Nordstrom.
Sales for Nordstrom have tumbled recently. Its June same-store sales declined 18.6 percent. —Andrew Asch
