Nordstrom Building Binge Includes Plans for Orange County, Riverside
Riding a building wave of popularity, a top Nordstrom official boasted Wednesday of ambitious plans to add at least 14 more stores across the nation, including “several” more in Orange County and one in Riverside.
Those new Southern California stores, along with the chain’s previously announced expansion plans, would bring to 72 the total number of stores, boutiques and discount outlets owned by the upscale specialty chain.
Speaking at a preview of the 155,000-square-foot Nordstrom that opens Friday at the new Main Place/Santa Ana Mall in Santa Ana, Bruce Nordstrom, co-chairman of the board and a grandson of the chain’s founder, highlighted the chain’s first move east of the Rockies.
The company expects to trade on the same things that have worked for it in the West, he said. “Good selection, quality and total service” will grab Eastern shoppers’ attention just as it has won the chain a steady stream of customers in Southern California, Nordstrom said.
The firm’s first East Coast store will open in March of next year at Tysons Corner in McLean, Va. A year later, another store is planned in Pentagon City, in the Arlington, Va., area near the Pentagon. Other new stores are planned for Chicago, Boston, Minneapolis and Denver.
Two new Orange County stores--locations have not been selected--would give the chain at least five full-service Nordstroms and one discount outlet in the affluent county of 2.1 million. It would be the Seattle-based retailer’s heaviest concentration outside its home state of Washington. There were no details regarding the proposed store in the Riverside area.
As of Friday’s opening in Santa Ana, Nordstrom will operate 47 full-service Nordstrom stores and Place Two boutiques, as well as 11 Nordstrom Rack discount outlets in California, Washington, Oregon, Utah, Montana and Alaska.
Nordstrom’s previously announced California stores include two in San Francisco, to open next year, and one each in Sacramento, Santa Barbara and the Bay Area city of Pleasanton, all scheduled for 1990 openings.
In his remarks Wednesday, Nordstrom said he expects the chain to post $2 billion in sales this year.
Analysts reacted positively to the details of the national expansion.
“They have a concept that works, and they’ve done well in new areas,” said Lesa Sroufe, a research analyst with Foster & Marshall in Seattle. “They’re offering quality clothes in a pleasing environment and emphasizing customer service, so they should do well.”
The Santa Ana Nordstrom is one of three retail anchors at the expansively and expensively renovated mall, formerly called Bullock’s Fashion Square.
The new mall, with 1.15 million square feet of retail space, was built by JMB Federated Realty Associates and Orange County shopping center magnate Henry T. Segerstrom--who is managing partner of the family owned company that built and owns the South Coast Plaza Mall 10 miles away in Costa Mesa.
In addition to Nordstrom, anchors at Main Place/Santa Ana are a new J. W. Robinson’s department store and the Bullock’s store that was built as part of the original 550,000-square-foot outdoor shopping center in 1958.
The renovation and new construction that transformed Fashion Square into Main Place cost $90 million and took more than two years.
Other tenants at the mall--which officially opens Sept. 26-- include a gourmet produce market, a six-screen movie theater, a 25,000-square-foot plant and home accessories store and a variety of specialty retailers and clothing stores. In all, the mall will have 170 stores when fully leased, its developers said.
With the new Nordstrom only a few miles from the chain’s first Southern California store at South Coast Plaza and less than 20 miles from Nordstrom’s Brea Mall store in northern Orange County, competition will cut back gross sales at all three, Nordstrom said.
The newest store, he said “will take some of the growth” from its sister stores, and overall growth rates will slacken. “But (Orange County) doesn’t have enough (retail) space yet,” he said, so profit for all three should continue climbing.
Nordstrom’s South Coast Plaza store last year lead the chain with sales of $109 million, according to Women’s Wear Daily.
NORDSTROM ON THE MOVE
The Nordstrom store opening Friday in Main Place/Santa Ana is the 47th full-service store or boutique in the growing Seattle-based chain. Now in six Western states, the chain is moving eastward as part of an ambitious national expansion program.
California: 19 (including Santa Ana.)
Washington: 15
Oregon: 7
Utah: 3
Alaska: 2
Montana: 1
EXPANSION PLANS
California: San Francisco (2 in 1988); Santa Barbara (1989); Pleasanton (1990); Sacramento (1990); also considering sites in Orange and Riverside counties.
Virginia: McLean (1988); Pentagon City (1989).
Other states: Considering sites in Chicago, Boston, Denver, Minneapolis metropolitan areas.
