Barneys New York Opens in S.F.
Specialty retailer joins growing high-end retailer scene in San Francisco
Barneys New York will open a flagship store in San Francisco on Sept. 19. Players in the Bay area’s fashion industry hope this new emporium could spark a fashion renaissance in the city, or at least get people to think more about San Francisco’s fashion potential.
The five-story Barneys New York will be located at 77 O’Farrell St. in San Francisco’s Union Square. Over the past few years, Union Square has become a magnet for high-marquee fashion names ranging from a Bloomingdale's flagship, which opened in September 2006, to a Prada boutique, which is anticipated to open by the 2007 Holiday season.
San Franciscan Yetunde Schuhmann is betting that the Barneys will be one of the final elements needed to pump more energy into the fashion cachet of her city.
Schuhmann is the first president of the San Francisco Innovative Design Council, which was founded in March. Currently there are 20 members in the organization, which will act as a business incubator and trade group. Schuhmann hopes the group will guide the city toward building a new fashion district on Sixth Street in the city’s revitalizing Mission District.
Recently Schuhmann met with San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom to discuss building a district of showrooms, ateliers and manufacturing shops on the rough hewn Sixth Street in the next five years. She hopes that a Barneys flagship, which is located a five-minute walk away from Sixth Street, will attract crowds of curious tourists to find out about new San Francisco designers.
“It’s a historic fashion town,” Schuhmann said of the city that gave the world Levi's and The Gap. quot;it has a lot of potential.quot;
For Kazuko Morgan, a commercial real estate executive, the Barneys flagship represents a barrier that was broken down. Last year she said that San Francisco was under-retailed. “We have come a long way. We’re more in line with other urban places,” said Morgan, a senior director based in the San Francisco office of real estate firm Cushman & Wakefield.
With high-profile fashion names staking out places in Union Square recently, the price of the real estate now shares similar costs for commercial space on fashion streets such as Robertson Boulevard in Los Angeles.
Commercial prices for San Francisco’s Union Square increased 20 percent in the past two years, according to Morgan. This year, the cost of a square foot of real estate in Union Square can range from $30 to more than $40 per square foot.
But the high cost of real estate hasn’t quashed the enthusiasm of the high-profile fashion retailers looking to move to the area. In 2006, Bloomingdale’s opened up its second-biggest store in Union Square's Westfield San Francisco Center shopping mall.
The 338,550-square-foot Bloomingdale’s helped attract many other national and international retailers to the mall. Many had not previously maintained a store in Northern California, such as Zara, MNG By Mango and Los Angeles-based speciality store Planet Funk.
Outside the mall, Cartier recently opened a boutique at 250 Post St. Other familiar fashion-mall names such as Ben Sherman have recently opened stores in Union Square.
quot;San Francisco was always one of our primary markets for expansion,quot; said Michael Celestino, executive vice president of Barneys New York. quot;It was more a question of finding the right space. It's not necessarily easy in an urban location to find the right real estate to open a store.quot;
The San Francisco Barneys should be familiar to anyone who visited a Barneys New York store, according to Jeffrey Hutchison, president of the New York–based design firm that helped shape the look of the store. “The heart and soul of Barneys is one of taste, luxury and humor. We provide the backdrop of taste and luxury,” said Hutchison, who leads Jeffrey Hutchison & Associates.
The store starts with a lower level, which will feature cosmetics, fragrances and homewares. The main floor of the store will offer concierge services, accessories and jewelry.
A women’s shoe salon will be located on the second floor. The third floor will hold women’s designer collections. They will include Bottega Veneta, Rick Owens, Balenciaga, Prada, Versace, Nina Ricci, Martin Margiela, L’Wren Scott and Barneys New York Collection.
The fourth floor will be the location of the Women’s Co-op, which will offer the contemporary fashion labels and accessories found in the popular Barneys New York Co-op stores. It will offer Loomstate for Barneys Green, J Brand, Ksubi, Marc By Marc Jacobs, 3.1 Phillip Lim and Trovata.
Men’s Designer, Men’s Contemporary Sportswear and Men’s Co-op will be housed on the fifth floor, with collections from diverse designers such as Lanvin, Paul Smith, Band of Outsiders, James Perse, Pringle, Nice Collective and Helmut Lang.
Union Square’s high profile should be a good fit for Barneys New York, which was recently purchased by Dubai-based investment firm Istithmar for $942.3 million. The deal was announced in August, and the celebrated retailer will reportedly continue with its expansion plans, which also include opening another flagship store in Las Vegas in 2008. The new flagship will be located at the Venetian Palazzo project, which will be connected to The Venetian hotel.
Other Barneys New York openings include a Phoenix store, set to open in fall ’09, and an expanded store opening in Chicago in 2009. The company completed a similar expansion in Seattle this summer, replacing a Barneys New York with a new, larger store.
“It’s got to be the right location,” said Celestino. “I don’t necessarily think you’ll see 40 Barneys New York flagship stores in the United States. For us, to have flagship stores in the key locations in the U.S. is our goal right now.”
