High-end jeweler leases two-story Oak Street retail space

A high-end jewelry store is taking over a retail space on Oak Street, as more and more retailers flock to the luxury retail area off Chicago’s Magnificent Mile.

Burdeen’s Jewelry, a Chicago-based fine jewelry shop, will open a two-story location at 120 East Oak Street, CoStar News reported.

The 10,000-square-foot building was previously leased by Northern Trust Bank, which closed the location in late 2020. Chicago-based L3 Capital, a firm co-founded by Domenic Lanni and Timothy Phair, owns the property, and purchased it for $23 million in 2018 from a trust whose beneficiary was shielded from public records.

Burdeens is one of several new retailers to have recently planted flags on Oak Street, an ultra high-end Gold Coast shopping strip adjacent to the Magnificent Mile’s northern end.

Its success, unabated even amid the pandemic, resulted in its small-scale store model becoming considered one to replicate on the Mag Mile to help kickstart Michigan Avenue’s rebound. An Urban Land Institute panel was tasked with brainstorming how to break the Mag Mile out of its pandemic slump as a quarter of its retail space is vacant, more than double the 2018 figure.

It suggested bringing Oak Street landlords’ strategies around the corner by creating smaller, boutique-type stores on Michigan, where brands unique to Chicago could become tenants beside small-scale luxury shops between the Drake Hotel and 875 North Michigan Avenue, formerly called the John Hancock Center. Recent tenant losses on the Mag Mile include departures by Banana Republic, Gap, Macy’s, Uniqlo and Timberland.

Back on Oak, French brands Cartier and bag maker Goyard are both respectively planning stores at the former Barneys shop at 1-15 East Oak, and a multi-story store in the ongoing redevelopment of 41 East Oak.

The strip’s other tenants include Chanel, Hermes, Harry Winston, and Prada. In 2021, German Union Investment Real Estate bought the Chanel-anchored building from New York-based Jenel at 57-65 East Oak for $120 million, with the $4,165 per square foot for the property coming in at Chicago’s third-priciest in history by that measure at the time of the deal.

— Miranda Davis