Say It Ain't So

“Say Good-Bye to Marshall Field's.” “Field's No More!” “A Horrible Day for Chicago.”

The headlines in the local newspapers blared the news as we were gathering in Chicago for this year's International Retail Design Conference.

On September 20, Federated Department Stores announced that Marshall Field's, one of Chicago's great old names in retailing, would be rebranded as Macy's. And on September 23, we would be presenting the 2005 Peter Glen/VM+SD Retailer of the Year Award – to Federated!

Talk about the planets aligning!

Was Chicago mad? Well, not exactly. Chicago doesn't get mad. A city that has not seen a baseball championship since 1917 learns to live with defeat.

So not mad, perhaps. But clearly disappointed. And sad. Change Field's to Macy's somewhere in Indiana or Wisconsin. But not our Field's, not the old 800,000-square-foot icon on State Street.

Tom Cole, Federated's vice chairman who spoke at IRDC in accepting the Peter Glen award, said all the right things a smart retailer would say, about operating efficiencies, cost-reductions, brand-building and concentration of efforts. If Federated is to single-handedly revive the department store concept, as it seems it has taken it upon itself to do, it has to make these moves. That was clear from the beginning. Sentiment doesn't drive comp-store sales.

But sentiment is still such a huge part of retailing, especially of department stores. Maybe Federated saw that nobody in Atlanta or Cincinnati or Seattle was especially moved when Rich's, Lazarus, Bon Marche all became Macy's stores one morning in March. Well, maybe those are different cities. Chicago reveres its history, good or bad. “Al Capone ate here” is as referential in Chicago as “George Washington slept here.”

We had our IRDC party in Field's that week. A great old store. The architecture. The atrium. The Tiffany dome. The classic columns. When I was growing up, it fairly burst with shoppers. But, to be fair, it has not been bursting with shoppers for some time. It's off Michigan Avenue, several blocks from the Magnificent Mile, alongside the unwelcoming shadows of the el tracks. Visitors to town prefer the bustle around Neiman Marcus, NikeTown and Crate & Barrel, especially after dark.

So, sadly, no surprise. But will the Macy's brand play in Chicago? True, Macy's is the Thanksgiving Day parade, and people from around the country huddle in front of their TV sets to see the balloons and floats. And true, Macy's is “Miracle on 34th Street,” a movie that still resonates at Christmastime.

But Macy's is also New York. And Chicago has had New York pushed in its face for a century. Where do you think “Second City” comes from? You know who's First City!

The Yankees, Wall Street, Broadway, the Empire State Building, Central Park – everything is represented as bigger, better, more exciting in New York than in Chicago. Chicago already had an inferiority complex. Now this.

Some 84 years ago, a youngster was said to be standing outside a Chicago courthouse as the White Sox' Shoeless Joe Jackson emerged after testifying that he and several teammates had taken gamblers' money to throw the 1919 World Series. Throw the Series?!?

The boy is said to have cried, “Say it ain't so, Joe.”

Sorry, Chicago. It was so then. And it is so, now.