Macy’s Downtown Los Angeles closure

Macy’s, whose roots in Downtown Los Angeles hail back to the era of President Grover Cleveland and the first Ford vehicle, is closing.

The closure of the 250,000-square-foot Macy’s Downtown LA Plaza at 750 West 7th Street marks the first time downtown will lack a full department store in almost 150 years, Los Angeles Magazine reported.

With bare shelves and signs hawking discounts of up to 70 percent, the Macy’s department store will soon turn out the lights. Its final day was not disclosed.

Last February, Macy’s announced that 150 stores were going out of business, sending shock waves from New York to San Francisco. Tony Spring, its CEO, decided to shutter underperforming department stores to boost sales and pivot toward selling luxury goods.

The closures, 30 percent of Macy’s stores, were to take three years.

“Closing any store is never easy,” Spring said in a statement. “But as part of our Bold New Chapter strategy, we are closing underproductive Macy’s stores to allow us to focus our resources and prioritize investments in our go-forward stores.”

For the chain — known each fall during its annual Thanksgiving parade in New York — that may mean marching its last mannequins in D.T.L.A. to the Goodwill.

The Downtown Macy’s reopened in 2015 as part of the The Bloc shopping center, once known as Broadway Plaza.

It’s a descendant of The Broadway, a department store that opened at the same location more than half a century ago, according to L.A. Mag. That store had moved from its namesake street four blocks east in 1973 in a spot it had occupied since 1896.

Coulter’s was the city’s first department store, opening at Temple and Spring streets in 1878, becoming subsumed by The Broadway in 1961. Every one of L.A.’s home-grown department stores, including Robinson’s, Bullocks and the May Company, evolved into Macy’s.

And while downtown Los Angeles was once the place to shop, with 7th and Broadway the nation’s busiest intersection by the flagship Bullocks, that’s no longer the case.

While downtown has seen its last department store, newer retail centers are still drawing spenders, from discount bazaars such as Santee Alley and the Apple Tower Theater and luxury boutiques such as ROW DTLA and Swedish clothier Acne Studios.

Around the corner from Macy’s are Target, Uniqlo and Nordstrom Rack, as well as Ross and Burlington Coat Factory on Broadway.

Just not an old-fashioned department store, according to L.A. Mag. With Macy’s gone, the “last descendant of long-gone stores that were beloved by generations of Angelenos fades away.”

— Dana Bartholomew