There Goes the Neighborhood
The sale of Parisian (here’s the Parisian wiki) to North Carolina-based Belk hit the Bryant household (and Birmingham) hard. Some folks may be out of a job, but Bayer Properties is making sure the sale doesn’t affect their investments.
Bayer is suing both Belk and Parisian over the sale.
Belk plans to turn the Summit Parisian store into a Belk. Bayer says Parisian was invited into the shopping center because of its high standards and the high quality of merchandise. You can sum it up by saying “Parisian attracts a certain kind of customer”. It’s a customer that Belk, historically, doesn’t attract.
Bayer feels, if the new anchor store at the Summit starts attracting a different customer, the whole place will start down a slippery slope towards becoming a low-end shopping center.
It makes sense to me. It’ll be neat to see how this one turns out.
You can keep up with the lawsuit as it’s covered by the Birmingham Business Journal.
More power to Bayer then. I wandered through their store in the Galleria last week and if this is what they’ll be replacing Parisan with, I know I won’t be going there.
We couldn’t agree more!
Belk does have the ability to be upscale. Their flagship store in Charlotte is very much in line with the Summit customer. It’s just a matter of whether or not they choose to bring that merchadise assortment to Birmingham. I think they’d be crazy not to. But, they chose not to do it at the Galleria… maybe it was because they knew they couldn’t go head-to-head with the Parisian there. Who knows?! I don’t know if Bayer can legally prevent the Parisian store from becoming a Belk, but maybe they can at least get a legally binding agreement to ensure that Belk brings their upscale format to the Summit. If not, bring on Nordstrom!
Hey T-Bird,
Did you read about this in the Birmingham Business Journal? If you didn’t, you should. It looks like Bayer is going to put up a bug fight.
…or should i say big fight?