Sephora closing Water Tower Place location

The scent of decay along the Magnificent Mile got a little stronger with word that fragrance and cosmetics retailer Sephora will shut its store at Water Tower Place at the end of the month.

MetLife Investment Management, landlord of the mall on North Michigan Avenue, confirmed the chain’s plans to vacate its 5,000-square-foot space on the fifth floor, Crain’s reported.

It’s the latest high-profile setback for the 818,000-square-foot mall, which in the past four years has shed a range of high-end to bread-and-butter retail brands, ranging from Henri Bendel to Macy’s, Banana Republic, Gap and Abercrombie & Fitch.

The 50-year-old Water Tower Place isn’t alone in the erosion, as other retail centers and shops on the Magnificent Mile have been ailing in the face of reduced foot traffic that’s remained a troubling trend in the wake of the pandemic. The famed shopping strip’s retail vacancy has consistently clocked around 30 percent for the past five years.

Sephora, meanwhile, intends to keep nearby shops, including one beyond the Magnificent Mile, at 845 North Michigan Avenue and in Block 37 at 108 North State Street.

MetLife took the mall over from Brookfield Properties, which handed it back to the lender in 2022. The landlord’s current plans call for an “immersive retail experience” in a bid to draw shoppers.

Meanwhile, recent legislation allowing a business improvement district in the Magnificent Mile area was signed into law by Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker recently. 

The area also could get an organic boost from the ongoing trend of office-to-residential conversions, which is in the works for a 24-story building owned by Greenwich, Connecticut-based Commonwealth Development Partners at 500 North Michigan Avenue. 

Success in reviving the area would mark a historic full circle for Chicago, where the Water Tower that lends its name to the ailing mall was one of the few structures that survived the Great Chicago Fire in 1871. Indeed, it is revered in local lore as the starting point of the reconstruction that made Chicago into one of the leading cities of the nation and world.

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