home *** CD-ROM | disk | FTP | other *** search
- <text id=90TT2523>
- <title>
- Sep. 24, 1990: Business Notes:Retailing
- </title>
- <history>
- TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1990
- Sep. 24, 1990 Under The Gun
- </history>
- <article>
- <source>Time Magazine</source>
- <hdr>
- BUSINESS, Page 71
- Business Notes
- RETAILING
- Puttin' on More Ritz
- </hdr>
- <body>
- <p> How does Beverly Hills' ultra-luxe Rodeo Drive get ready for
- an expected retail slump? By expanding, of course. So it was
- that klieg lights flashed and 50 fashion models strutted their
- stuff last week to launch a 23-store mall that cost $170
- million to build on the famed shopping street. Known as Two
- Rodeo, the two-block project, which is designed to look as if
- it had been in place for a century, features an Italianate
- cobblestone lane called Via Rodeo that comes complete with a
- piazza, sculpted travertine fountains and a staircase patterned
- after the Spanish Steps in Rome.
- </p>
- <p> Two Rodeo is the brainchild of San Francisco developer
- Douglas Stitzel, a onetime University of California, Berkeley,
- Sanskrit scholar turned businessman, who is charging his tony
- tenants top dollar for their new space. Tiffany, Cartier,
- Sulka, Valentino and other luxury outlets that plan to arrive
- by November will pay as much as $250,000 a month rent.
- </p>
- <p> At those prices, the upscale shops must hope to avoid a
- slump in Christmas sales that some experts say could reduce
- business up to 4%. But that prospect has not daunted two
- Japanese investment firms that in June agreed to acquire a
- majority stake in the project for more than $200 million.
- </p>
-
- </body>
- </article>
- </text>
-
-