After Closure Announcement, a Look at Macy’s Heyday…and Union Square’s Future

KQED's Forum

KQED

Politics, News, News Commentary

4.6 • 656 Ratings

🗓️ 1 March 2024

⏱️ 56 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Macy’s announced this week it would be closing its flagship Union Square store, among 150 other underperforming stores across the country. The news is just the latest blow to the city’s beleaguered shopping district. We’ll talk about the store’s iconic history and imagine other futures for downtown and Union Square. And we want to hear from you. What are your Macy’s memories? And what would you like to see happen in that building and in Union Square? Guests: Amy Campbell, building transformation and adaptive reuse leader, Gensler Peter Hartlaub, culture critic, San Francisco Chronicle Annie Appleby, her parents met while working at Macy's Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:43.6	From KQED.
0:59.9	From KQED in San Francisco, I'm Alexis Madrigal. Well, Macy's announced that it was closing 150 stores across the country this week,
1:07.2	including their massive spot anchoring Union Square. It's not going to happen tomorrow,
1:13.4	but it will happen. And while cities predated department stores by a few millennia, for most
1:19.6	of us alive, downtown department stores were a thing that signaled, hey, this is a city. So we'll
1:26.0	share some memories of that Macy's, send it on its way as a cultural icon, and then
1:31.6	we'll try to imagine our way together to some kind of future for these huge retail spaces.
1:37.3	That's all coming up next after this news.
1:48.6	Welcome to Forum.
1:49.9	I'm Alexis Madrigal.
1:56.1	Our metropole here, San Francisco, is undergoing a strange and unprecedented transformation.
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