Christmas nostalgia doesn't pay the bills: Why old-fashioned department stores aren't coming back to downtown OKC

Christmastime's a comin', and for those with snowy hair, and others with old, romantic souls, with it come memories, or dreams, of yuletide festivities, sales and Santa at big downtown department stores with elaborate store fronts.

Once upon a time, downtown Oklahoma City was a full-service department store shopping destination, and not just during the holidays.

Sue MacHugh went as a youngster.

"I remember my friends and I riding the bus from Norman to downtown OKC to shop at Brown's, Kerr's and Rothschild's," she said. "We liked to shop for clothes. For lunch we would go the Anna Maude cafeteria. Then we would ride the bus back to Norman.

"This was in the early '50s. We were in our early teens. At that time there was no fear about young teen girls traveling like that."

Memories like that last a lifetime.

Oklahoma City's downtown retail promenade is long gone

Dee Moore, 84, can't forget his mother buying him Buster Brown shoes at one downtown store with an X-ray shoe-fitting machine. The devices, in wooden boxes similar to an old radio console, were popular in shoe stores and shoe departments in the 1930s and '40s, until deemed dangerous in the '50s.

He, too, took a bus downtown, with his mother, from several miles north, to shop — and a family trip downtown in 1945 to celebrate Victory in Europe Day marking the Allies' success in World War II.

Peace birthed the resurgence of retail downtown, peaking in the 1950s when department stores were lined up along W Main Street, a promenade that no longer exists.

Memories of them are now tied to the ground underneath Devon Tower, the Devon Energy Center Parking Garage and buildings to the east. The sole surviving store building is the old Montgomery Ward at 500 W Main, which closed in 1966, a luxury apartment building for nearly 20 years.

How do such images persist for people whose hair isn't that frosty?

Vintage Hollywood keeps downtown department stores alive in pop culture

Thank Tinseltown.

Film classics like "Miracle on 34th Street" (1947), "A Christmas Story" (1983, set in 1940), and more recent holiday movie fare like "Elf" (2003), on heavy rotation keep Christmas memories, hopes and dreams alive and spinning.

Plus, Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade (since 1924, on NBC since 1953).

Nostalgia is rich, but it won't pay the bills. The stores left downtown for good reasons: Malls and shopping centers and the rise of suburbs.

It was a lifetime ago, a septuagenarian at least, when retail peaked downtown in the 1950s, and nearly five decades since the last many-splendored emporium, John A. Brown, left in the 1970s.

What are the chances that downtown Oklahoma City could ever see another big department store?

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Downtown OKC survived, barely, as did central business districts in other parts of the country. Then many of them thrived again. But things were different even before COVID and the related recent swoon in office use, which curbed retail again.

Department stores, though, for the most part, never came back, partly because urban renewal knocked down so many buildings that had housed them. Many, though, relocated to the suburbs on their own initiative.

Later came new initiatives.

"Since the beginning of the 2000s, cities have poured millions into revitalizing their downtowns in an effort to create a more dense, walkable and active environment," said Jim Parrack, retail specialist with OKC's Price Edwards & Co., commercial property brokerage. "Millennials loved it, bringing life back to downtowns. Retail was a part of this revitalization, but it was different."

Retailers now focus more on food and entertainment than traditional retail. Department stores and grocery stores are still "a piece of the puzzle, albeit a smaller piece," he said, although downtown OKC has neither.

Downtown living, not a requirement when downtown shopping was a destination, started to return to downtown OKC nearly a generation ago. But there still aren't enough people living downtown to make a department store or big grocery store successful, he said.

How many people would have to live in downtown OKC to attract a department store? There is a 'magic number'

"Just as retailers follow rooftops in the suburbs, a certain threshold of people downtown are needed to make it work," Parrack said. "For big-square-footage, traditional retailers like department and grocery stores, this is even more true."

The magic number? He said it would take about 20,000 people living in the central business district, "meaning directly downtown."

Kansas City, Missouri, has about 24,000 downtown residents, he said, "and a department store, a grocery, and the Power & Light District." Boston has 27,000 downtown residents, and a downtown Macy’s and grocery. "And so it goes across the country."

Oklahoma City is "on the outside looking in, with roughly 10,000 downtown residents," Parrack said.

It doesn't help that department store performance, wherever they are, "is a bit hit-and-miss," he said, making taking the risk with a new downtown location now, anywhere, unlikely.

The solution for Oklahoma City? Parrack replied with seasonal mirth: "Watch 'Miracle on 34th Street' to get your Christmas downtown department store fix and, in your spare time, build another 7,000 units of housing here so we can have our own Christmas Miracle."

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A department store in downtown OKC? Specialist: Not in our lifetime

Other retail property specialists were less mirthful on the subject. Most said the idea was humbug, not likely anytime soon, anyway.

“No. Not in the foreseeable future,” said Harrison Levy, chairman of Newmark Robinson Park, who has been in the commercial real estate business since 1961.

Yes, he said, “People increasingly are moving downtown, but we would need downtown residents to multiply substantially before we have the numbers to support a large department-type store. This won’t happen in our lifetime."

The likelihood of a full-service department store coming to downtown OKC is "very remote" because of "multiple headwinds," said Stuart Graham, a retail specialist with CBRE Group.

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"First, there will be very few department stores open in the United States in any given year," Graham said. "The competition for these openings is fierce and downtown Oklahoma City doesn’t offer the population density and co-tenancy of many of the competitors.

"Second, this sector of retail has been declining. While there are a few bright spots and resurgence in spots, large-format retail remains challenged. Finally, the positioning of our downtown, relatively close to Penn Square Mall and OAK, makes downtown less likely."

Even people living downtown face the same reality that caused department stores and other retailers to leave downtown in the first place, Graham said.

"Given the quality of our highway system, a downtown resident can get to Penn Square or Quail Springs (Mall) within 20 minutes. This makes new stores downtown less likely."

Downtown OKC could support a department store, one specialist says, but 'easier said than done'

Louis Almaraz, vice president of retail with Newmark Robinson Park, has a jollier outlook for downtown shopping. He even holds out the possibility of a new department store downtown in the not unimaginable future, although it would be "easier said than done."

"Assuming there’s a downtown building that could be made available, I think the main obstacles would be providing one, convenient, covered parking and two, securing a department store that would have sufficient allure to entice today’s shopper," he said. "I think if you could solve these issues there is certainly, in my opinion, a large enough OKC customer base to support a big downtown department store."

People still do shop in person, Almaraz said, and are still drawn to experiences they can't have online. Shopping "experiences," which are what attracted people in the past, could do so again, he said.

"There are plenty of consumers who still enjoy the hands‑on shopping experience, who don’t want to fret or trouble themselves with the uncertainty of returning items because the color of an item isn’t quite what it looked like on their computer screen or the size wasn’t quite right," he said.

Plus, he said, a few national department stores, such as Nordstrom and Neiman Marcus, and regional department stores, such as Von Maur, "offer convenience, selection, service, dining, and special shopping experiences that are simply not available online."

Shopper traffic can go both ways, he said.

"For many OKC residents, it’s equally convenient to drive downtown as it is to drive to a suburban shopping center. So, yes, in my opinion, I think downtown OKC has a big department store in its future," Almaraz said.

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This article originally appeared on Oklahoman: Why downtown OKC no longer has department stores