Saks Off 5th in Eastchester – one of the off-price arms of Saks Fifth Avenue, which opened to great fanfare on July 14, 2022 on the ground level of the former Lord & Taylor – will go the way of L & T on Saturday, March 28.
The closure, which follows the shuttering of two Saks Off 5th locations in Greenburgh and Stamford on Feb. 2, is part of Saks Global LLC’s Chapter 11 bankruptcy restructuring.
In its final weeks, the store has seen steady foot traffic, particularly at its jewelry counters where patrons sign in and wait to be called to purchase everything from Effy gemstone rings, earrings, necklaces and bracelets to Versace watches. When we visited Thursday, March 26, jewelry prices were slashed 80%, with another 20% on top of that. So an Effy emerald-cut, lab-grown diamond that was originally priced at $6,000 sold for about one-sixth of that. (Chemically and visually identical to mined diamonds, lab-grown stones are 70% to 90% cheaper as they are mass-produced. While natural diamonds retain a 25% to 50% higher resale value, lab-grown diamonds are particularly prized by young shoppers as affordable luxury.)
As Saks Off 5th customers considered the difference, one could be heard bemoaning the loss of another off-price store to what may be a further extension of White Plains Hospital. (White Plains Hospital Physician Associates is located in the rest of the former Lord & Taylor site at 750 White Plains Post Road.)
Apart from the jewelry, there were a few racks of clothes left as well as some of the furnishings. With signs announcing that “everything must go” in traditional fire-sale fashion, one shopper joked about buying a shopping cart for remembrance.
While Saks Off 5th signs off, it turns out that reports of the death of Neiman Marcus in The Westchester mall in White Plains – to paraphrase Mark Twain’s joke about his own demise – have been greatly exaggerated.
“We are pleased to share that our Neiman Marcus Westchester store will remain open following recent productive conversations with our landlords and further evaluation,” a Saks Global spokesperson announced Monday, March 23. “Our approach to optimizing our footprint remains centered on ensuring we focus our presence in markets with a high concentration of luxury shoppers where we can operate at an attractive level of profitability. We look forward to continuing to serve customers in the Westchester community.”
Why the about-face? Apart from the alluded-to productive talks with the Simon Property Group – which operates and co-owns The Westchester, anchored in part by the 143,000-square-foot Neiman Marcus – there is the Saks Global strategy laid out in a recent Forbes article that suggests going forward Neiman Marcus will drive the conglomerate.
Saks Global, the name chosen after Saks acquired Neiman Marcus and sister store Bergdorf Goodman in 2024, had pared down to 13 Saks Fifth Avenue locations, including the Manhattan flagship and The Saks Shops at Greenwich; 12 Saks Off 5th locales; the Bergdorf Goodman flagship on Fifth Avenue; and 32 Neiman Marcus stores. That was before adding back Neiman Marcus Westchester and the stores in Sarasota, Florida, and Palm Desert, California.
Is former Neiman Marcus Group CEO Geoffroy van Raemdonck, called back to steer the company through bankruptcy, playing favorites? Not at all, he said. Rather, he told The Wall Street Journal, it’s all about considering which stores do best in which markets, since there is a less than 15% overlap between Neiman and Saks patrons.
“I want to operate in markets that have the most potential,” he said.
Apparently, Van Raemdonck has reconsidered the potential of Westchester, which has been one of the wealthiest counties since before the American Revolution. Neiman Marcus has been a fixture here since 1981.
Recognizing all this, Saks Global has in effect said, “uh, never mind.”
Through Saturday, March 28, Sakes Off Fifth store hours are 10 a.m. to 7 p.m.
