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BACK BAY LUXE

Posh retail cachet helps Boston’s Copley Place lure Barneys

BY DEBRA HAZEL

All it takes is a walk through Boston’s Copley Place to see why Barneys New York chose this mall for its first new flagship in 11 years. The clean, spare lines of the elegant marble-and-glass interior, designed by locally based Elkus Manfredi Architects, are complemented by sculptures and greenery, not unlike what one might find in a posh office building or hotel.

Now more than 20 years old, Copley Place, owned by Simon Property Group, has become as much a part of Boston as the Freedom Trail or the nearby Prudential Center.

Average sales per square foot in excess of $800 match the decor of the 367,457-square-foot Copley Place, which occupies the bottom two levels in a nine-story, 850,000-square-foot office and hotel building in Boston’s Back Bay district. Barneys will join existing anchor Neiman Marcus and several luxury tenants next spring, reinforcing the center’s high-fashion orientation.

“We’re after pre-eminent luxury retailers,” said William J. Kenney, CSM, the general manager of Copley Place. “We count Barneys among them. It just made sense. It was the perfect match of merchandise.”

Simon had been talking with the New York City-based fashion retailer for about two years, beginning not long after Simon acquired Copley Place in 2002 as part of the breakup of Rodamco North America’s portfolio. Barneys officials declined to comment for this story.

“It’s a complement to Neiman Marcus,” said Cynthia M. Kernan, a vice president of leasing at Simon. Neiman Marcus has anchored the center since its 1984 opening.

The 46,000-square-foot Barneys also fits into a plan that will make an already high-end center even more designer-oriented. Built by Urban Investment and Development Corp. (developer of such projects as Chicago’s landmark Water Tower Place) on what had been rail lines, the center sits in the heart of one of Boston’s wealthiest areas. The local trade area has a population of 1.1 million, and yearly household income averages $77,455, according to Simon. The Museum of Fine Arts and Boston Symphony Hall are nearby.

Simon spent the past three years evaluating and tinkering with the center’s merchandise mix as leases came up for renewal. New tenants include English shirtmaker Thomas Pink, watch retailer Tourneau and hosiery emporium Wolford. They will join a mix of high-end fashion tenants that includes Louis Vuitton and Gucci.

But the center also contains such mid-range tenants as Express, Nine West and Victoria’s Secret, because the trade area includes daytime office workers and tourists. The Victoria’s Secret has been “right-sized” from 5,500 square feet to 15,000 square feet, Kernan says.

The mall is a local hangout for Back Bay residents and a haven for the office workers. Shoppers in sweatshirts mingle with those attired in haute couture. About the only thing missing is a traditional food court.

“It knitted together the Back Bay and the South End of Boston,” said Kenney, who watched the center being built when he was a student at Boston University. “Part of its appeal was on that basis.” Now the South End is rapidly gentrifying and getting trendy, with rents skyrocketing.

The two-level Barneys, which will occupy a former 11-screen Loews movie theater and an old FYE music store, will allow Copley Place to carry designers that cannot be accommodated with stores of their own; there simply is not room to expand the center beyond its current footprint, hemmed in as it is by office and residential development and the Back Bay rail station across the street. “We’ll have 46,000 square feet of designers,” Kernan said.

That will reinforce the mall’s image and, indeed, Boston’s image as a home for high fashion, says James M. Koury, a senior vice president of Spaulding & Slye Colliers, a Boston-based commercial real estate services firm. (Spaulding & Slye Colliers has had no business arrangement with Copley.)

“It helps us maintain a cutting-edge sense of place,” Koury said. “It helps us stay in the forefront of the fashion industry.”

Kernan is looking at adding more jewelry tenants to complement Tiffany and wants to expand the food offerings, which now include Legal Sea Foods and Starbucks. She also is considering additional lingerie shops to complement Victoria’s Secret.

The mall remains in excellent condition, so a full renovation is not necessary, says Kenney. A new heating, ventilation and air-conditioning system has been installed, which is not unusual for a 20-year-old center, he says. And wider escalators are to replace the narrow ones.

The center is working more closely with area hotels and the developers of local residential buildings to attract shoppers. Currently, tourists make up about 21 percent of the Copley Place customer base, but Kenney notes that they spend about three times more than locals do. Consequently, the center’s management is working with the Massachusetts Office of Travel and Tourism to boost the tourist percentage.

This will not be Barneys first store in Massachusetts. It recently agreed to extend its lease at another Simon property, The Mall at Chestnut Hill in Newton, Mass. But the two stores will not compete, according to Koury. Chestnut Hill, some 5.5 miles from the center of Boston, is an inconvenient drive, and city dwellers do not often make the trip. “They are two totally separate markets,” Koury said.

For retailers and landlords, Boston offers a healthy business climate, with shopping center vacancies at 6.2 percent, down from 6.9 percent in 2003, according to The Finard Report: Eastern Massachusetts and Greater Boston 2005.

With a healthy market, a growing customer base and a new anchor, it’s little wonder that Kenney is more than a little enthusiastic about Copley Place. Right now, he said, “coming into the city to work at Copley is very exciting.”