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COLLECTION AT CHEVY CHASE BRINGS LUXURY STORES TO D.C.

By Barbara De Lollis

Starting this month, Washingtonians will enjoy Madison Avenue-style shopping just as if they were in New York City. Ten of the world’s top names in luxury retailing have opened outposts in a new shopping center five miles or so from the White House, Embassy Row and Washington’s best hotels.

For some of them, The Collection at Chevy Chase (5471 Wisconsin Ave.) is a first foray into a prospering metropolis with limited luxury offerings. For others, it is a chance to expand floor space in the diplomatic city.

The two-level center is part of a mixed-use, 400,000-square-foot, $165 million development; its high-end tenant list will include Cartier, Gucci and Tiffany & Co.

The center, built by owner-developer Chevy Chase Land Co. and designed by Hellmuth, Obata + Kassabaum, boasts a modern exterior of marble, steel and stone. Tenants will occupy town-house-like shops distributed across two separate buildings, each with a distinct facade. The look distinguishes it from its neighbors along bustling Wisconsin Avenue, including Saks Fifth Avenue and Neiman Marcus.

And the Collection joins a select group of high-end shopping centers that are one-off projects by family developers. Others include Frank Castagna’s The Americana at Manhasset, on New York’s Long Island, Stanley Whitman’s Bal Harbour (Fla.) Shops and Henry Segerstrom’s South Coast Plaza, in Costa Mesa, Calif.

The Collection’s two retail buildings are separated by a 9,000-square-foot open space filled with granite sculptures created by San Francisco artist Richard Deutsch.

Of the buildings’ 112,000 square feet, Ralph Lauren occupies the most space — 16,000 square feet — a two-story mansion inspired by the company’s Madison Avenue flagship, complete with working fireplaces and balconies. Customers will find women’s, men’s and children’s clothing and home goods.

Co-Op Barneys New York is the second-largest tenant, taking 11,400 square feet for what will be its eighth freestanding Co-Op, a more casual offshoot of the luxury department store. The timing of the Collection worked for Barneys, following its recent acquisition by Jones Apparel Group. “We were ready to expand,” said Barneys spokeswoman Dawn Brown. Barneys will open another Co-Op in Georgetown later this year.

Cartier and Tiffany, which up to now sat across the street, are opening larger stores at the Collection. MaxMara leased 8,415 square feet, on which the company will open its first restaurant outside Japan and Italy, and a café that will serve cappuccinos in the sculpture park, weather permitting. Dior opened in October, according to Edward Hall Asher, president of Chevy Chase Land.

Older, wealthy women make up a large part of the local audience, so Chevy Chase Land also leased 6,475 square feet to day spa Georgette Klinger, where facials start at $95.

Initially, says Asher, the company considered building a center for lifestyle stores, but scrapped the idea in the face of great interest from luxury retailers.

Because of the concentration of full-price luxury retailers, the developer has been referring to the center as “The Rodeo Drive of the East Coast.” Retail experts say the moniker is deserved. “This is Washington, D.C.’s version of Fifth Avenue,” said Peter Framson, principal of Bethesda, Md.-based Green Light Retail Real Estate Services, which was not involved with leasing the project.

Framson says clients of his looked at the property and liked it, but were turned away by rents that reached as high as $150 per square foot. Before this, $95 per square foot was considered expensive, says Asher. Whether the space is worth the price is not immediately clear, he says, explaining that justification depends on store sales and the harder-to-quantify recognition the brands get from having their nameplates posted in a high-income area. Store sales per square foot will probably range between $700 and $2,500, depending on size and category, and somewhere around $1,500 per square foot for the Collection itself, the developer says.

“For the more staid, older female shopper, I think it will be very successful,” Framson said. “It’s a very, very densely populated, highly sophisticated, high-income marketplace.”

The one possible challenge Framson foresees is one that any retailer faces: fickle shoppers. “One year, they were all into Gucci, and then Fendi, and then they switched to Kate Spade,” he said.

Are discreet Washingtonians ready for the splashy fashions fresh off the runways of New York and Paris? Definitely, says Asher. He acknowledges the buttoned-down Washington of years past, which was “pretty much a Brooks Brothers town.” But the area started to shed the image during the Clinton years, when Hollywood types often partied at White House galas. An appreciation for glitziness rubbed off on the nation’s capital, and it remains. The region has prospered over the years, too, helped by the high-tech and government-contracting industries, spreading affluence throughout Montgomery County. Average household income near the center is about $87,000 a year, according to Delta Associates market research.

Other luxury retailers agree that the public’s perception of Washington needs updating. “Washingtonians are such sophisticated customers,” said Peter Marx, whose luxury boutique a block from the Collection has dressed wealthy Washington women in designer fashions for years. “It’s been mislabeled as a government town for too long.” Marx, whose store carries such haute couture labels as Etro, Valentino, Yves St. Laurent Rive Gauche and others not represented at the Collection, welcomes the new neighbor.

High-end shoemaker Jimmy Choo, in the midst of a global expansion, had been scouting the region for a location when it heard about the project, says Jimmy Choo spokeswoman Caroline Berthet, noting the location’s proximity to current and potential clients in the Washington, Maryland and Virginia areas. The center is about three miles off the Beltway, the major highway that circles the district, and a short walk from the Friendship Heights metro station. Asher says the developer allowed ample room for parking — 1,400 spaces — because it expects area expansion to boost demand.

Luxury retail consultant Larry Horton, who helped lease the project, says building a home for a group of luxury retailers in Chevy Chase, which borders the District, was especially wise, given the area’s long-held reputation for panache. High-end shoppers were already accustomed to driving along Wisconsin Avenue to reach Saks Fifth Avenue and Neiman Marcus, which are only a few blocks apart. The Collection is situated between them on land that had been occupied mainly by neighborhood retail.

The Collection is almost fully leased. Remaining are a 20,000-square-foot space for a destination restaurant and two small, top-floor spaces — 2,100 square feet and 3,000 square feet, respectively — without street frontage, Asher says.

In addition to the upscale retail, Chevy Chase Land is completing a 200,000-square-foot office building for The Mills Corp. in the same neighborhood. A further 100,000 square feet will house a Giant supermarket, an ice cream store, a Papyrus store, a dry cleaner and two banks.

It’s all part of the unbuttoning of a Brooks Bros. town.