And Dillard's makes three.
The upscale retailer announced Wednesday that it has joined Nordstrom and Macy's as anchors of City Creek Center, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints' estimated $1 billion downtown Salt Lake City redevelopment project.
Dillard's will occupy 150,000 square feet on three levels near the northeast corner of Main Street and 100 South, the church said Wednesday.
"This is a great fit," Dillard's spokeswoman Julie Bull said. "At Dillard's we've been taking a more upscale approach to the market, both in merchandise presentation and store presentation. City Creek in Salt Lake City provides us a great opportunity to present the market with our latest advances in both those areas."
Bruce Heckman, vice president for development at Taubman Centers Inc., which will develop, lease and manage the retail center, said Dillard's was always the first choice to fill the final anchor slot, and talks had been ongoing since the church's project was announced three years ago.
"We think Dillard's responds well to the market, and they're quite anxious to put in a brand new store that they'll build from the ground up, to show the best that it has to offer," Heckman said. "This will be the first real location where a brand new Dillard's and a brand new Nordstrom and a brand new Macy's will be located together in the market — three major anchors located together in the same center, in brand new stores, offering the best they have to offer."
City Creek Center is expected to open in fall 2011 and will include retail, office, residential and open space on the former Crossroads Plaza and ZCMI Center blocks. When complete, Nordstrom will have a two-level, 124,000-square-foot store located midblock on West Temple, while Macy's will occupy 150,000 square feet on three levels on the east side of Main Street.
Heckman said long-term agreements have been reached with all three anchors, though he wouldn't specify the terms or specific length of those agreements.
"I'll say they're long-term agreements," he said. "You'll definitely be able to count on them being here.
"The thing about this type of a project is that these stores will build and own their own stores. So when they make a commitment to a project like this, it's no casual commitment. It's not like they're a tenant signing a lease. They're making a substantial commitment to the market. There are an awful lot of cities in the United States that would give their right arm to have department stores like these committing to their downtown. Salt Lake City should be very proud."
About 300,000 square feet of additional retail space — or about 100 stores — will link the three anchors, according to the church's preliminary plans. Now that the anchors are in place, Heckman said Taubman can recruit in force. However, don't expect announcements about other new tenants anytime soon.
"It's going to be awhile," he said "This project isn't scheduled to open until 2011. We won't really start announcing stores until, I'd say, the earliest would be about a year before opening. But that doesn't mean we won't be leasing them."
While Heckman said he understood the desire many Utahns have expressed for a super-glamorous department store — a Saks Fifth Avenue, for example — it just wasn't in the cards.
"The Salt Lake market, unfortunately, is just too small to fit those kinds of stores," he said. "If they came, they'd have to create their own distribution system and all of that. It's a much bigger thing than most people imagine."
And there's the Sunday thing. As of press time Wednesday, Bull was unable to say whether Dillard's had concerns about City Creek's policy to close retail operations on Sundays or whether the store has agreed to close on Sundays in any of its other markets.
"To my knowledge, our Salt Lake City stores and our stores nationwide are generally open on Sundays," she said. "I am not aware of our being closed on Sundays in any market."
As stated on the Downtown Rising Web site (www.downtownrising.com), which provides details and updates about the project, "in the new development, on property owned by the Church, all retail stores will be open six days a week. On property not owned or sold by the Church, individual owners can make that decision." The three anchor stores will be located on land leased from the LDS Church.
And then there's the redundancy thing. Arkansas-based Dillard's already has six locations in Utah at the Cache Valley Mall in Logan, the Fashion Place Mall in Murray, Newgate Mall in Ogden, Provo Towne Centre in Provo, South Towne Center in Sandy and Red Cliffs Mall in St. George. But that doesn't automatically mean more of the same at City Creek, according to Heckman.
"One, you've got a store that, while it isn't new to the market, it is proven in its market," he said. "Two, you'll have a new Dillard's — a brand shiny new one with its new format, which will be different from anything anyone has seen in Utah."
To Deseret Morning News readers like Max Chang, who wrote in an e-mail that "it's a bit disappointing to me as I hoped they would have brought in someone new and different than what we already have here," Bull had this to say:
"Come and take a look at us at City Creek Center. I think you'll be pleasantly surprised."
E-mail: jnii@desnews.com