After Dallas officials announced the city had secured the deed for the Downtown Dallas property that has been home to Neiman Marcus' flagship store for more than a century, the retailer's parent company had strong words about the future of the retail institution: There isn't one.
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Despite a campaign to keep the 100-year-old department store alive, its parent company Saks Global is determined to close it, calling those efforts unproductive.
Saks Global announced last month it would close the store, citing a lease dispute that set off a city effort to find a solution.
Dallas City Manager Kimberly Bizor Tolbert announced Monday that she and members of the Dallas Consortium for the Downtown Neiman Marcus would meet with Saks executives to discuss the future of the store on Wednesday.
Saks Global fired back with a statement criticizing officials for making “inaccurate claims” about the situation in the press.
“The Dallas Consortium’s ongoing tactic of using the press to pressure us into changing our strategy in Dallas is highly unproductive,” a Saks Global spokesperson said in a statement emailed to Bisnow. “Our decision to close the Neiman Marcus Downtown Dallas store is final and we are moving forward as such.”
The consortium includes the city manager, Downtown Dallas Inc. President Jennifer Scripps, Dallas Economic Development Corp. CEO Linda McMahon and Todd Interests Chairman and founder Shawn Todd.
The group jumped into action after Saks Global announced Feb. 18 that it would shutter the downtown Neiman Marcus store at the end of March after receiving a notice from its landlord to terminate its occupancy.
The Slaughter family, which had signed a 99-year ground lease with Neiman Marcus in 1926, then pledged to donate the land the store is on to the city of Dallas.
But Saks Global reaffirmed its intention to close the store in a Feb. 27 press release and touted a planned $100M renovation of the brand's location at NorthPark.
“Dallas continues to be a top market for the Neiman Marcus brand,” Saks Global CEO Marc Metrick said in a statement. “Based on customer data, we know that the overwhelming majority of our Dallas customer base prefers to shop at our NorthPark store.”
In her remarks Monday, Tolbert said the city now holds the special warranty deed Saks Global said was needed to keep the downtown Neiman Marcus store open.
The response from Saks Global notes the situation had been dragging on for more than a decade and is “far more complicated” than the public knows. The company said it made multiple attempts to speak with Tolbert directly but was “denied.” It also said the purported Wednesday meeting with the city manager was never confirmed.
The store closure is not due to its performance, according to an internal memo sent last month by Metrick, The Dallas Morning News reported.
“From as early as 2011 and as recently as December 2024, there have been several attempts to come to a commercially reasonable agreement with this landlord,” Metrick said in the memo. “All of these attempts have been rejected by the landlord who has now terminated our occupancy.”
Saks Global, which acquired Neiman Marcus last year, also announced last month that it planned to also close the retailer’s three-story office in Cityplace Tower. That move came after the company determined employees averaged less than two weeks of work in the office per year, Bloomberg reported.
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