Chicago's Magnificent Mile

Downtown business districts have been losing customers to fast-growing suburban shopping centers, but a lively exception is Chicago's North Michigan Avenue. During the past decade, $2 billion worth of construction has risen on and near North Michigan, which Chicagoans call "the Magnificent Mile." California's 1. Magnin has just opened a branch there, joining already established Bonwit Teller and Saks Fifth Avenue of New York, as well as such fashionable shops as Tiffany and Cartier. Soon they will be joined by Dallas' Neiman-Marcus. Two weeks ago came the biggest news of all. Chicago's retailing giant, Marshall Field & Co., whose main store in the Loop on State Street is scarcely a mile away, and New York's Lord & Taylor announced that they will both open branches in Water Tower Plaza, a $100 million shopping, hotel and apartment complex that will go up on the avenue.

The rise of Michigan Avenue reflects the decline of State Street. More and more, State Street stores have been switching to budget-basement merchandise and catering to lower-income blacks, while North Michigan has been attracting higher-income whites by concentrating on high-fashion goods. But, despite the general adversity in U.S. central cities, North Michigan has prospered for another reason: its fine mix of commercial, residential and recreational properties bring in business. The handsome, tree-lined avenue is the center of an area that accommodates 400,000 white-collar workers in the daytime; at night the area's hotels, steakhouses, theaters and nightclubs lure more crowds. It is a sort of Main Street for the Gold Coast, a residential community of 40,000 upper-income city dwellers.

"We think this is the most exciting metropolitan shopping location in the world," says Philip Klutznick, the real estate executive whose Urban Investment & Development Co. is building Water Tower Plaza. Lord & Taylor's Chairman Melvin Dawley is equally euphoric: "North Michigan Avenue has more vitality than Manhattan's Fifth Avenue."

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