Officials say destination retail is growing downtown
Upscale clothier Brooks Brothers opened its first Greenville store in the ONE building at the corner of Main and Washington streets last week and reported a busy first weekend.
Brooks Brothers is the country’s oldest clothing retailer and specializes in classic-style clothing for men, women and children. The nearly 6,000-square-foot Greenville store – with 5,000 square feet of retail space – is a medium-sized location for retail, said store manager Barrett Midulla.
The Main Street store has nine staff members, including a tailor, and will feature more of the retailer’s Red Fleece line, which is cut slimmer and targeted toward a younger buyer, said Midulla, who most recently helped to open a Brooks Brothers store in Asheville and also worked at the store in Charlotte.
Greenville mayor Knox White said Brooks Brothers’ arrival in Greenville represents the attainment of a goal to bring more destination retail to the downtown area.
“The destination retail stores draw customers to the local specialty retail stores,” he said.
City officials have been actively recruiting destination retail for years, and were diligent in wanting to create a retail cluster on the north end of Main Street to complement the West End, White said. But the arrival of Brooks Brothers may signal the “tipping point,” he said, meaning the need to recruit may be over. Greenville’s first destination retail store, Mast General Store, arrived downtown 10 years ago.
ONE developer and owner Bob Hughes (sporting a Brooks Brothers shirt) said the work to bring the store to Greenville started more than a year ago. He echoed White’s views on the city’s retail progression.
“Someone told me, ‘Anthropologie is a coup, but Brooks Brothers starts a trend,’” he said. “I think downtown has become the preferred shopping destination.”
Fast fact
The construction company that travels the country outfitting the interiors of Brooks Brothers stores (and others) is Weekes Construction – based in Greenville.
