University Village addition Crate & Barrel opens today
Today, the outdoor shopping center will unveil its biggest catch yet in home furnishings as Crate & Barrel opens a two-story, 36,000-square-foot store, its second in the Seattle area.
But aren't there enough home-furnishings retailers at U. Village?
Not as Gordon Segal sees it. The founder and chief executive of Crate & Barrel said he prefers opening stores next door to his strongest competitors, reasoning that a higher concentration of big-name retailers adds drawing power.
"We always try and cluster together when we can," Segal said. "We like being together, actually. Look at the Pike Place Market — you've got a cluster of people there selling the same kind of fish, crab and salmon. When you think about markets, you want variety and choice."
Crate & Barrel, a privately held company based in Northbrook, Ill., is a retailer on a roll. It pulled in $840 million in sales last year, up from $720 million in 2001. It has 118 stores, adding about four a year. Sales at most stores open at least a year were up 4 to 5 percent in 2002, Segal said.
Segal has had his eye on University Village for more than a decade, he said. Starbucks Chairman Howard Schultz pitched him the idea of opening a store there. But that was before it had been redeveloped into the open-air "lifestyle" shopping center it is today. Segal said he wasn't impressed when he first saw the U. Village and vowed that "if we go anywhere (in the Seattle area), we'll go to Bellevue."
Crate & Barrel did that in late 2000, opening its first Washington store at Bellevue Square. That store has done well, Segal said, and he's now glad to join U. Village, which he says has developed a "sense of sophistication and openness."
With the Seattle area awash in layoffs and the state's unemployment rate among the highest in the nation, it hardly seems an ideal time to open another store in the Northwest. But Segal and Scott Eirinberg — co-founder of Land of Nod, a children's home-furnishings store opening next door to Crate & Barrel — say they want to be in Seattle because it has the highly educated, casually minded customers their stores seek.
"Certainly the economy right now is not in a great state, not only in Seattle, but also throughout the country," said Eirinberg, whose company is 50 percent owned by Crate & Barrel. "We're building a business for the long term."
Other stores opening in U. Village's new North Building, which broke ground in February 2002, are Storables, Fiorini Sports, Metropolitan Pilates, Jamba Juice and Starbucks. In early fall, Apple Computer will open a 7,000-square-foot store in the space vacated by Fiorini.
Also new is a six-floor, 800-stall parking garage attached to the North Building. U. Village has said for years that it needs more parking. Its 1,200 surface parking spaces can be hard to come by on a busy day, and officials reached a deal in 2001 with neighborhood residents who opposed the garage.
"The parking really is a big story for us," said Susie Plummer, general manager of U. Village. "We would not have been able to attract Crate & Barrel without the parking."
Even competing home-furnishings retailers at U. Village say they welcome the arrival of Crate & Barrel. Cope Miller, co-owner of Miller-Pollard, a 51-year-old independent store, said Crate & Barrel will generate more shoppers and deliver him more customers who are thinking furniture.
Besides, Miller says, his store — which offers interior-design service and sells furniture, gifts and accessories — has custom touches the chains can't match.
"It'll definitely attract more people, because it's such a great name and people know it," Miller said. "(Customers) can get pieces from me and pieces from them and blend it together."
Jake Batsell: 206-464-2718 or jbatsell@seattletimes.com