Downtown Mpls. Neiman Marcus to Close Jan. 31

Neiman Marcus’ downtown Minneapolis store, located at Gaviidae Common, will close on January 31, 2013.
 
The Neiman Marcus Group, Inc., based in Dallas, said in July that it planned to close the store by July 2013, which is when its lease was scheduled to end.
 
But the company, which operates the upscale department stores of the same name, has reportedly been working to get out of the lease early and, on Monday, revealed a more specific closure date.
 
Spokeswoman Ginger Reeder told Twin Cities Business on Tuesday that the store will be fully stocked for the holidays and will offer items from the highly anticipated limited holiday collection that Neiman Marcus and Minneapolis-based Target Corporation partnered to create. That collection includes more than 50 products from 24 designers, and they’ll hit the shelves at both Neiman Marcus and Target stores on December 1.
 
“It will be our last Christmas as a store and we are all determined that it will be our best, showing Minneapolis that we take pride in our jobs and what we do,” Neiman Marcus spokeswoman Catherine Loose recently told Mpls.St.Paul magazine Senior Editor Allison Kaplan.
 
Neiman Marcus opened the 118,000-square-foot Minneapolis Neiman Marcus store in 1991—and it has served as a downtown retail anchor ever since. (Gaviidae Common is located at Fifth Street and Nicollet Mall, and its other retail anchor is Saks Fifth Avenue.)
 
The downtown Neiman Marcus store is the only one in Minnesota. It employed 107 prior to the July announcement about the planned store closure, and the company said at the time that those workers would either have the option to transfer to other stores or would receive severance packages.
 
Kaplan reported in her Ali Shops blog that very few associates from the Minneapolis Neiman Marcus store have left and some longtime employees have vowed to be the last ones out of the store.