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Lenox Square/Phipps Plaza


Temeteron

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While I was at Lenox today they had all the new stores that were coming in the new neiman marcus wing

Puma

True Relegion

diesel

Miss Sixty

Sony style and H&M

The progress of this project is moving pretty fast the mall is making alot of changes right now its getting ready for a big makeover and more stores

Hooray for True Religion, Puma, Diesel, Sony Style & H&M!!! Miss Sixty...sounds familiar...

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I dont see why Ben Sherman and Diesel dont have stores in Atlanta, their clothes are everywhere else!

Dolce and Gabbana used to have a store at Phipps several years ago. Not sure when they closed it though.

Ben Sherman is especially surprising because their parent company (Oxford) is headquartered in Midtown. They only have 3 stores currently, though so they're early in their expansion. I imagine we'll see one before too long. I think the British fashion selection here could use a boost.

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Other than the NM wing expansion its likely that Atlanta will not see many retailers that do not have a presence here until 2009 and later. That's when some retail in Midtown, the Prospect Park development in Alpharetta, and the Buckhead village development begin to come online.

Edited by Martinman
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I was in abbadabba on Pharr on Saturday and the guy said that they are getting ready to close because "everything around here is being bought up by a company who is bringing in ?Gucci? cause their making this into a Rodeo Drive kind of area.."

I went to Phipps and didn't get a chance to go in Lenox :( I was telling my mother tonight how odd it is that Phipps' upstairs has that ramp to match up to Lord & Taylor (now Nordstrom's) mall entrance. I also remember some needlepoint store on the left (where she made me sit for an eternity) and a cool electronics store at the middle of the mall.

I have fond memories of Lenox from my youth. I met "Willie Wonka" in there in 1977 and we used to eat at El Chico and The Magic Pan every time we went to Atlanta. (we didn't have Mexican in Raleigh in the mid 70's). My mother and sister loved this store they had called "The Limited". We also used to buy jeans from a store on Piedmont called "The Gap". ha ha.

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I have never posted in this thread, mainly because I hate malls. If their ever was a symbol of America's unrelenting, unparalleled pursuit of material consumption, this is it. Doesn't anyone find is rather sad that we are no longer citizens, but consumers? Even the President of the United States reinforced this notion when, after September 11 and the invasion of Afghanistan, we were told by our Commander in Chief, our Head of State, that the best thing we could do for the war effort was to go shopping. WHAT?!?!?! Could anyone imagine FDR telling our parents, or in some cases our grandparents, that all we had to do to defeat the Nazis and Imperial Japan was to go shopping??? Instead of a forum ohhing and awwing at what wonders will grace the halls of Lenox and Phipps, lets talk about the fact that a 50% voter turnout is considered incredible or that only about 25% of our 18 to 24 year olds even bother to show up on election day. No wonder W got re-elected.

Malls have taken what was once the domian of the public, the street, and turned it into private property where freedom of speech and assembly have no place. They have taken the liveliness and uniqueness of the street, homoginized it and repackeged it into the typical mall you see in every city of every state .

I feel sorry for my generation, for we have never known what it was like to take the streetcar to downtown, or to know the butcher by his first name, or to visit Rich's when it was actually owned by the Rich's and not some faceless corporation located half a continent away. If any of you that are younger then 35 or so still have their grandparents left I implore you to ask them to tell you stories about their childhood, and what it was like to live in a real city.

Give me the hustle and bustle of 57th Street in New York over the banality of either Lenox or Phipps any day!

Edited by ryanmckibben
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I have never posted in this thread, mainly because I hate malls. If their ever was a symbol of America's unrelenting, unparalleled pursuit of material consumption, this is it. Doesn't anyone find is rather sad that we are no longer citizens, but consumers? Even the President of the United States reinforced this notion when, after September 11 and the invasion of Afghanistan, we were told by our Commander in Chief, our Head of State, that the best thing we could do for the war effort was to go shopping. WHAT?!?!?! Could anyone imagine FDR telling our parents, or in some cases our grandparents, that all we had to do to defeat the Nazis and Imperial Japan was to go shopping??? Instead of a forum ohhing and awwing at what wonders will grace the halls of Lenox and Phipps, lets talk about the fact that a 50% voter turnout is considered incredible or that only about 25% of our 18 to 24 year olds even bother to show up on election day. No wonder W got re-elected.

Malls have taken what was once the domian of the public, the street, and turned it into private property where freedom of speech and assembly have no place. They have taken the liveliness and uniqueness of the street, homoginized it and repackeged it into the typical mall you see in every city of every state .

I feel sorry for my generation, for we have never known what it was like to take the streetcar to downtown, or to know the butcher by his first name, or to visit Rich's when it was actually owned by the Rich's and not some faceless corporation located half a continent away. If any of you that are younger then 35 or so still have their grandparents left I implore you to ask them to tell you stories about their childhood, and what it was like to live in a real city.

Give me the hustle and bustle of 57th Street in New York over the banality of either Lenox or Phipps any day!

+1 on the Malls... Hopefully we'll be able to take the Street Car to downtown in the near future. :-)

As for elections...

With the drastic changes in technology in the last few years, I'd be willing to be we see a dramatic up-tic in the % of 18-24 year olds voting. Adds on YouTube.com are already popping up and I think this type of creative effort, as well as web-based fund-raising, will draw a lot more interest from that demographic than the typical spin on standard TV and news media.

When I lived in New Zealand, they had a really high voter turnout but they also voted on Saturdays. While I doubt this would get us to the 90% level, especially for non-presidential elections, I think that this would greatly increase the number of people showing up at the polls.

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I agree---Saturday voting would be a great idea. I agree with you Ryan on everything you said, but I do have to say that Lenox is a bit different. It's kind of an Atlanta institution......

So is it's disdain for mass transit...we see where that has gotton us. I understand what you are saying though.

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I have never posted in this thread...
Ryan, I appreciate your perspective being added to this thread and I don't disagree with you in a general sense.

Even though I'm "the original mall guy," I'm not giving malls a free pass. There are a lot of crappy malls out there, and your points about privatization of public space are well taken. But even 57th Street has become a mall of sorts, and the forces that create shopping meccas like that are the same forces that create malls, albeit in a slightly different form.

I don't think the societal trends that led us to the lifestyle we have now as developed nations (the suburban mall is an American creation, but a worldwde phenomenon) would have been mitigated if there were no malls. Malls get the bad rap because they're big and shiny and people are familiar with them, but they're only buildings. Any building or space can symbolize what's wrong with society if we assign that meaning to them.

Further, the halcyon days of a generation or two ago are nostalgic for us becaue we either grew up in that time or had parents or grandparents that remember that time fondly, but the reality of the situation was that back in the day, people were still complaining that the world was going to hell and that society would be better if it rolled back the clock. This has been going on for as long as humans have inhabited the earth, because we are uniquely blessed with the ability to block out the worst of the past and remember the best.

Just my two cents...

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I enjoyed your response, and you are absolutely correct when you say that malls get the blame for a much larger, problem that has beset many industrialized countries. In short malls are the symptom of an underlying condition, not the condition itself. As I said in the original post,they are the symbol of rampant materialism You are also correct that 57th Street in NY has been "malled" for lack of a better word...how sad.

As for my nostalgia for years past, I hold no misconceptions about life in our big cities in the early part of the 1900's. But it is the tangible aspects of that living arangement that I believe are superior to our situation today. You say, correctly, that there have always been those who bemoaned the fate of society. Those have most always been based on social mores or values. What I am speaking of is the actual urban form itself and the type of human relationships that were formed out of, if nothing else, familiarity with those around you. How many people reading this post knows the name of one person who works at the grocery store they routinely shop? Probably not many. Suburban environs, with their malls included, do not promote the type of social interaction that urban areas do. They stress personal space at the expense of public space, from our single occupant auto commutes, to the focus on back yards instead of front yards. Malls too, especially the "regional mall" draw from such a wide geographic area that you could go to the same mall everyday, sit on the same bench, at the same time and never recognize a single person. In essence we are all "Bowling Alone".

Edited by ryanmckibben
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I also share your disappointment with the homogenization of American retail. Like Stevenrocks said, I was incredibly disappointed when we hit 5th Ave a few years ago and found so many chains and so few store that offer things we can't get in Raleigh. Granted, our retail here has vastly improved in 30 years, but I don't think that NYC is as good as it was then.

About the president's statement; you are dead wrong. When 9/11 happened, people got spooked and quit buying things for a few months. It alone put this country into a recession. I am a dentist and have still not recovered from the losses incurred from the 12 months after 9/11 when people were spooked. Take some Econ classes and sit back and watch, and you'll notice that America's prosperity and freedom are derived from two things: bomb making and the increasingly faster spinning money cycle. If it slows, we are in real trouble. If this makes you unhappy, my suggestion is to quit worrying about what other people are doing with their money. Focus on what you enjoy because this still is the most comfortable, most generous country in the history of mankind.

The more demand there is for good retail, however, the more we will see creative enterprise. IOW, if we continue to support good retail, then people will be inspired to use their creative talents to provide us with better retail. If we schlep along and accept the same old same old, we'll continue to get the same old same old.

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Ryan and Steven,

Great comments, thank you!

Personally, I'm not a mall fan either. To me, they often seem generic. I don't like the way they tend to be situated away from the street in the midst of vast parking lots. I can only imagine what it costs to heat and cool their huge interior spaces. And as Ryan said, they enclose what used to be public spaces.

Nonetheless I accept malls as a feature of American life. Places like Lenox are now mature enough to have developed a certain organicity of their own. After all, it's 50 years old -- 20 years older than the Winecoff Hotel when it burned, for instance, and about the same age as many of the downtown buildings we now revere as antiques were when I started working there in the 1970s.

By the way, the other day I heard some commentator say that one of the marks of progress in Kurdistan was all the new malls that are popping up.

:shades:

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If I am wrong about the statement the President made, it was only because I didn't include the full qoute. He also told us to keep traveling, and speciffically mentioned Disney World.

The broader problem is certainly not the lousy choice of retail merchants, it is the fact that America no longer produces anything. We just sell things to each other, whether it''s real estate or BBQ grills matters not. As long as the deck of cards that the global economy is built upon continues to stand, this charade can continue to go on. This is a potentially crippling set of circumstances that will not be solved by me not worrying about how other people spend their money. As far as economics go, I was a finance major in college and now work as a loan officer...I am very familiar with economic principles, just as much if not more then you are. That kowledge is what allows me to conclude that sending China about $200 billion per month in the form of our trade deficit and running annual budget defecits of any amount can not continue indefinately. I am familiar with all of the arguements that trivialize our national debt and claim that it is irrelevant. They are wrong...very wrong. Eventually the piper will show up and demand to be paid. Let's see how big of a hit your practice takes then.

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Wow - a walk through Lenox right now will show that numerous stores are undergoing massive renovations. The new wing looks great and I can't wait to see what goes in there in addition to the announced stores (Puma, Diesel, True Religion, Miss Sixty, and Sony Style). I would assume if we do get a Valentino and a Carolina Herrera, it will go in this new wing.

In other retail news....

Gap at Phipps is gone. No tears here...Atlanta is overGapped as it is and Gap doesn't belong in Phipps.

Two Abercrombie and Fitch's have closed in the past year. Avenue East Cobb and Cumberland. The Cumberland one just closed this past week. I'm sad about that because it was an old style A&F with plaid carpet and a wood facade that I remember from my childhood. I'm surprised they waited until after Cumberland renovated to close.

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...Suburban environs, with their malls included, do not promote the type of social interaction that urban areas do. They stress personal space at the expense of public space, from our single occupant auto commutes, to the focus on back yards instead of front yards...
This is slightly :offtopic: but I've seen a unique transfer of familiarity in the electronic age. Places like this forum have taken the place of the "town square," for better or worse. In a way, our intense need for personal space has manifested a kind of virtual shared community. where we know each other and share common interests, while we may or may not ever communicate with our physical neighbors or relatives. It makes no sense but yet it makes a lot of sesne. Humans are an odd bunch. Edited by StevenRocks
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  • 5 weeks later...

People have to buy stuff so that some people make a lot of money and are motivated to build the big pretty skyscrapers that so many on these forums seem to like so much.

The biggest falling-down of our educational system is that there is no basic personal financial education in our high schools. You ought not be allowed to graduate unless you know how dumb it is to run a balance from month-to-month on a credit card (unless you are literally starving and that is the only way for you to get food). Other than that, if people can afford it they can buy whatever they want with their own money and I won't get weepy about it and the government ought to let them keep as much of it as possible.

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I have never posted in this thread, mainly because I hate malls. If their ever was a symbol of America's unrelenting, unparalleled pursuit of material consumption, this is it. Doesn't anyone find is rather sad that we are no longer citizens, but consumers? Even the President of the United States reinforced this notion when, after September 11 and the invasion of Afghanistan, we were told by our Commander in Chief, our Head of State, that the best thing we could do for the war effort was to go shopping. WHAT?!?!?! Could anyone imagine FDR telling our parents, or in some cases our grandparents, that all we had to do to defeat the Nazis and Imperial Japan was to go shopping??? Instead of a forum ohhing and awwing at what wonders will grace the halls of Lenox and Phipps, lets talk about the fact that a 50% voter turnout is considered incredible or that only about 25% of our 18 to 24 year olds even bother to show up on election day. No wonder W got re-elected.

Malls have taken what was once the domian of the public, the street, and turned it into private property where freedom of speech and assembly have no place. They have taken the liveliness and uniqueness of the street, homoginized it and repackeged it into the typical mall you see in every city of every state .

I feel sorry for my generation, for we have never known what it was like to take the streetcar to downtown, or to know the butcher by his first name, or to visit Rich's when it was actually owned by the Rich's and not some faceless corporation located half a continent away. If any of you that are younger then 35 or so still have their grandparents left I implore you to ask them to tell you stories about their childhood, and what it was like to live in a real city.

Give me the hustle and bustle of 57th Street in New York over the banality of either Lenox or Phipps any day!

Well...I understand the dislike of malls, but past that all I can say is: "What a whiner!"

Consumption is part of life. Come on...find a society that isn't into consumption. The ones that aren't are failures. Go live in North Korea or their few and far ilk if you don't like consumption. Yes, malls are not an ideal environment. But save your Communist crap for the pinko blogs where people lack realism and an understanding of human beings.

I agree...I've traveled around and malls tend to make places way too similar. Every city has the same stores - quite boring. But I will never stray from a consumption society. This is reality - deal with the good and bad. It is what it is

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What's it like up there on your perch? You seem to have everything all figured out. Your example of a nation that has forsaken consumerism is absolutley perfect. I'm sure that being run by a nut job dictator has abosolutely nothing to do woth North Korea's current state of affairs. If only Gucci or Prada or Land Rover would open a store all of their problems would disappear, but what else can be expected from someone whose rebuttal rests on "You're a communist"? I half expected to see a nanny-nanny boo boo somewhere in your post. Also unsuprising from someone as self righteous as you come off as, you missed the entire point of my arguement. I have no problem with the consumption of goods and services. My problem is that we are literally consumed with consuming. So much so that consumer debt is at it's highest point ever, even when adjusted for inflation, relative to income. We, both individually and as a nation, are spending ourselves into ruin.

As for your claim of communism, isn't if kind of funny that the worlds largest communist nation holds roughly $8 trillion in reserves, while the worlds largest capitalist nation has roughly the same amount in debt? But your right, nothing to worry about...keep spending.

Edited by ryanmckibben
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^ Exactly. Spend spend spend. That's all we know how to do. We owe money to nations all over the world. I mean, we owe money to Mexico!!! What is that? Mexico of all places.

I don't see how someone complaining about malls makes them a communist. I don't see how someone pointing out the fact that our culture is obsessed with "stuff" of every persuasion makes them a communist. Our culture is dying and no one seems to care, basically because they're too busy trying on their new shirt or playing on their video game or whatever. It's insane!!!!

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^ Exactly. Spend spend spend. That's all we know how to do. We owe money to nations all over the world. I mean, we owe money to Mexico!!! What is that? Mexico of all places.

I don't see how someone complaining about malls makes them a communist. I don't see how someone pointing out the fact that our culture is obsessed with "stuff" of every persuasion makes them a communist. Our culture is dying and no one seems to care, basically because they're too busy trying on their new shirt or playing on their video game or whatever. It's insane!!!!

Our culture is dying ? Maybe it's "our culture" to be consumers. Maybe that is our role in the world ? Why is that any more insane then any other culture ? No culture is without it's issues. Being a consumer driven society is pretty far down on the list of problems if you ask me.

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