Nordstrom Is Coming To Manhattan

Analysts are calling the deal the most exciting thing to happen in Manhattan retail since the economic downturn began. But hold on to your credit cards, the store won't open until 2018 when the building is finished.

The chain, based in Seattle, signed a binding agreement with Extell Development this week to open New York City’s first new full-scale department store in recent memory, a 7-story, 300,000-square-foot behemoth in the base of a planned skyscraper on the north side of 57th Street, east of Broadway, according to real estate executives who have been briefed on the deal. Nordstrom has agreed to buy its portion of the building in a deal valued at more than $300 million. [snip] But if the company spent two decades looking for the right site, it will have to wait until 2018 to move in, the executives said. New department stores have become a rarity, especially with the growth of online shopping. And New York’s retail cemetery is filled with those that have expired: Gimbels, Bonwit Teller, S. Klein, Hearn’s, Saks-34th Street, B. Altman, Sterns, Alexanders, Orbach’s and Abraham & Straus.