A lot of people were betting against the success of the Shops at North Bridge.
The mall’s odd four-story configuration was sure to slight upper-floor tenants, some industry experts warned. The mix of stores, which focused heavily on children, didn’t wow others.
And the timing wasn’t great. The North Bridge development opened in the fall of 2000, just six months before the economy dipped into recession.
Against the odds, North Bridge is doing quite nicely. The development, anchored by a Nordstrom department store, racked up sales of more than $500 per square foot in 2001 and is on the way to $575 per square foot in 2002, well above the industry average, according to Lary Herkal, general manager of North Bridge and vice president with John Buck Co.
Still, there’s been a fair amount of coming and going recently among tenants.
El Portal, the luggage store on the second level, is on the way out as part of a chainwide liquidation that also affects its stores in Northbrook Court, Oakbrook Center and Old Orchard.
The Hallmark Creations store on the third floor is leaving, too. Corporate parent Hallmark Cards Inc. placed the concept store there as an experiment to see how it would perform in an urban environment.
“But this store didn’t perform at a level that would make it viable in that location,” says Rachel Bolton, Hallmark spokeswoman. “We don’t regret having tried it. That’s part of the mission of those stores.”
In its space, Nordstrom will be opening its first free-standing day spa. Spa Nordstrom is scheduled to open next spring and will offer services ranging from manicures to facials and body wraps to massages.
Nordstrom already operates nine in-store spas around the country, including one in its Oakbrook Center store.
Other new tenants on the way include Buca di Beppo, an Italian family-style restaurant chain from Minneapolis that will open next spring on the mall’s lower level at Grand Avenue and Rush Street.
A Jimmy John’s Gourmet Sandwich Shop also is coming to the lower level, next to the Bose stereo store.
That leaves the Shops at North Bridge with a 95 percent occupancy rate and only three empty spaces, Herkal says, including a tiny one on the first floor near The Body Shop.
As for the El Portal space, Herkal’s phone already is ringing even though the store won’t be empty until well after Christmas.
“We have people that immediately contacted us,” Herkal says. “When those spaces are available, we have a lot of interest.”
By the numbers: Who knew people felt so strongly about Roman numerals? We certainly didn’t until it came up last week in the context of Marshall Field’s.
A shopper had noted that a clock in a window of Field’s State Street store displayed the Roman numeral IV as IIII. He was concerned over the inaccuracy and wrote to Field’s about it. Field’s responded, explaining that all its clocks were like that, probably to reduce confusion between IV and VI, which is the Roman number for 6.
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Numerous readers informed us by phone and e-mail that they were taught that IIII is equally correct in Roman numerals and actually predates the use of IV.
One reader referred us to a Web site devoted entirely to the IV versus IIII debate.
There we learned that this is not a new argument.
The difference of opinion actually kicked into high gear in 1965 when Brooks Palmer, a well-known clock collector and authority, declared that old clocks never used IV unless it was done “by someone who didn’t know better.”
And now we all know better–or at least more.
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