Aside from Walmart, Nordstrom is the store every retail broker in the city dreams of harpooning and reeling into a new home. One prominent broker familiar with the store, the amount of space it needs and the rents it would probably be willing to pay estimates that the commission for handling its lease would be around $10 million.

But like a leviathan lurking beneath the waves, the department store has offered only fleeting glimpses around the city, most notably at several development sites and a few existing assets with the capacity to accommodate its sprawling footprint.

The scuttlebutt nowadays: Nordstrom is contemplating one of two leases, one at the West Side rail yards with the Related Companies or another at the base of Extell Development’s soaring new residential tower now rising at 157 West 57th Street.

Illustration by Zack Nipper

According to brokers familiar with Nordstrom’s search, the options are emblematic of the dilemma that has kept the retailer bouncing around Manhattan for years. The department store is ideally searching for a roughly 250,000-square-foot box, a commodity so rare in the city that the only major department stores that have it—Macy’s and Saks among a short list of others—are ones that have been established in the city for decades and hence had a chance to address their real estate needs before the market became as expensive and supply-starved as it is now.

The solution, of course, has been for Nordstrom to accept a smaller space with a layout that is atypical for a traditional department store.  Many brokers say the template for this configuration is the Bloomingdale’s on Broadway in Soho, where the retailer had to greatly reduce the size of its store and tailor its clothing line and layout to appeal to the type of shoppers in that neighborhood.

A similar reshuffling of the Nordstrom concept would likely be necessary to bring the chain to Extell’s project, brokers told The Commercial Observer. The attractiveness of the rail yards stems from an assumption that the company could design a building from the ground up to meet all of its specifications.

But the rail yards are considered a new frontier in the city with little retail connecting the site to Midtown, making a deal there a gamble if the neighborhood takes longer than expected to develop into a popular destination for shoppers.

Extell’s development, though perhaps ill fitting for Nordstrom, would place it at the center of Midtown and near the Time Warner Center, a successful high-end retail mall in Columbus Circle that has helped designate the neighborhood as a retail hub.

Nordstrom has been linked to that area before. Last year, developer Stephen Ross bought the mortgage on the office building 3 Columbus Circle with the intent to foreclose on the property, raze it and erect a new tower with Nordstrom in the base. The deal fizzled when Joe Moinian, 3 Columbus’s landlord, held onto the property by recapitalizing the building with SL Green.

The trade-off between location and compatibility has been a conflict for the company for more than five years. Nordstrom almost had a deal to move into an office tower that was to be built by Stephen Ross and Harry Macklowe on the former site of the Drake Hotel at 57th Street and Park Avenue.  A person directly involved in those talks said that lease eventually crumbled because Nordstrom pushed the physical limits of the project, insisting on towering ceiling heights and other amenities.

“They wanted 18-foot ceilings,” the person said. “You could literally do two office floors for every floor that they wanted. They placed themselves out of the game by needing too much.”

The office building at 650 Madison Avenue, not far from the Drake site, has also been a location that Nordstrom has considered. According to brokers, the issues plaguing that property centered around the likelihood that nearby department stores like Saks, Bloomingdale’s, Barneys and Bergdorf Goodman would balk at or even bar its vendors from supplying Nordstrom with the brands that they sell, which would essentially prevent Nordstrom from being competitive.

“None of the existing department stores are going to roll over and give into Nordstrom without a fight,” the broker said, adding that he wasn’t “100 percent certain that they have given up on 650 Madison.”

Perhaps out of necessity, the company has poked around downtown, reportedly checking out an anchor tenancy at the World Financial Center office complex as well as the retail being built at the World Trade Center. Here again, brokers said, Nordstrom has expressed a preference to be in Midtown.

dgeiger@observer.com

Known for its pink awnings and pre-school sounding name, the “fun and flirty,” retailer will pay $17,000 per month in the ten-year deal, said Peter Braus of Sierra Realty, who represented landlord Arthur Weyhe. Asking rent was $20,000 per month. Previous tenant Cohen’s Optical vacated the space early last year.

"Fun and Flirty" 794 Lexington Avenue. (Courtesy Property Shark)

The landlord will build out the store and provide a new storefront for the tenant, who plans to move in during the first quarter of 2012. It is the fifth Manhattan location for Pookie.

The choice of real estate hinged almost entirely on location, i.e. proximity to Bloomingdale’s, said Mr. Braus.

“It’s really hard to find retail space on that part of Lexington,” said Mr. Braus, who has also installed scented soap-purveyor Sabon and shoe store Orva in the area recently.

But male-oriented retail in the nabe? Forgettaboudit.

“[The area] caters to female shoppers—nothing that caters to male shoppers does well on that strip,” said Mr. Braus.

Sometimes, the popularity of a certain expensive article of fashion can be measured by the number of women who, not having saved the money to purchase it, attempt to steal it.

This has been the case, recently, with the ubiquitous Herve Leger minidress (pronounced Er-veh, Ley-Jeh), that flab-friendly blend of rayon, nylon and spandex that is like an industrial-strength, full-body pair of Spanx: constricting the unflattering parts of a women's figure while making her feminine attributes bubble out. "The best thing about these dresses is no matter what your figure, they look great on," the petit actress Lucy Liu has gushed to Women's Wear Daily. Regular women see this dress so often on television, in magazines and on the Internet worn by irregular women (Gisele Bundchen, Blake Lively, the Kardashians) that they believe they, too, deserve to own one, maybe even without having to pay for it.

Last week, the Upper East Side police precinct on East 67th Street received a call from an employee at the Herve Leger store on Madison Avenue to report a crime that occurred between 1:20 and 1:40 p.m. On July 21, in that bright, early afternoon daylight, three women who looked to be in their 20s, accompanied by a young man, entered the store and browsed the racks. While the women distracted the manager and a sales associate, the man, described to be about 6-foot-1 and 150 pounds, wearing tan shorts and white sneakers, grabbed three dresses hung up at the front of the store and fled northward on Madison Avenue. Without enough evidence to detain the women, the manager allowed them to leave the store. The dresses-a $7,200 long crystal black gown, a $4,900 black dress and a cream and black V-neck dress priced at $1,450-were never recovered and now hang in closets-perhaps those of the three women.

Just one week earlier, another four Herve Leger dresses went missing at Saks Fifth Avenue. According to the department store's security, interviewed by the midtown north precinct, on Sunday, July 11, around 6:30 p.m., two young women removed the dresses from a display and concealed them in a large shopping bag. This time the women, 20-year-old Felicia Therlonge and 22-year-old Crystal Alwood, were arrested and the stolen dresses recovered: a purple double-strap ($1,250); a blue wide-banded with a double V-neck ($1,050); a Batik bandage mini ($1,850); and another dress at the same price. The young women are being charged with Grand Larceny. (Back in October, Playboy model Tiffany Buecher filed a police report after her $1,800 Herve dress was stolen in the West Village while she was shopping.)

A rep for the fashion brand, when reached by the Transom, was surprised by the string of thefts involving the dress, but did not make Max and Lubov Azria, the designers behind the line, available for an interview. 

And the brand was not the only victim of fashionable thieves in the past two weeks. On Thursday, July 15, Jade Shallow, a resident of Brooklyn, was arrested on grand larceny charges after she stuffed four dresses (worth a total of $17,140) by Azzedine Alaïa, the Tunisian-born couturier, into her purse at Barneys on Madison Avenue around 6:30 p.m. The next day, three young men-Shaquelle Alcindor, 20; Charles Gordon, 20; and Qadir Eng, 18, all of Brooklyn-were detained after they charged two pairs of sneakers for $1,890 at the Christian Louboutin boutique on Madison to a stolen credit card.

But perhaps the most sympathetic victim of a recent department store theft was Arun Jolly. On Wednesday of last week, the 27-year-old resident of the Upper East Side parked his bicycle in the Bloomingdale's bike rack on Third Avenue. Mr. Jolly, who was leaving for vacation in Belize the next day, had come to the store that evening to exchange a pair of swimming trunks purchased there earlier for a different size. When he returned to his Cannondale bike five minutes later, the lock cable was snipped and its Kenda wheels were gone. He carried what was left of the bike home, on his back. "I parked it right outside the door, like four steps away," said Mr. Jolly when the Transom reached him by phone Monday. He was at the airport in Belize, heading back home. "I'll probably use another lock or two in the future."

Since Mr. Jolly has been away, he wasn't sure if the police had caught up with the bicycle wheel thief. When he returns, he said, he'll have to spend about $800 replacing the stolen wheels and other parts. As for the Bloomingdale's swim trunks he exchanged that night, he said they worked out perfectly for his tropical getaway, though he didn't recall the designer. "I actually don't remember the brand at all," he said. "Sorry."

It was a Saturday night, and he was checking out the scene in the bar’s “back room,” which was, well, a room in the back. More later.

At a little after 2 a.m., the little room was packed. So was the bar. So was the dance floor.

Before Sept. 15, the day the economy was sort of officially declared dunzo, the bar’s location on Avenue B might have recommended itself to a trendy, starkly furnished Asian-fusion bar-resto for investment bankers with a little imagination or Queer Eye on permanent TiVo.

But walking in to the Hose was like walking into a time warp: an East Village gay bar from the last recession. Drinks were sloshing across the bar at breakneck speed; and there was nudity! And scattered smoking! (Though on one recent visit, a patron lighting a cigarette in the back room was told to put it out. “That’s so not sexy,” the bartender scolded.)

“A bunch of us noticed the same thing when we got together on Monday,” said Brian Moylan, the editor of Next Magazine, a gay nightlife guide in New York. “We came in, and we’re like, ‘I went to blah-blah-blah and everything was packed! And my colleague is like, ‘Oh my God! I went to so-and-so and it was packed! And we put it together. Everyone is fucking going out. It’s January—or February now! And the weather is cold. It’s not a time when clubs are full. And people are standing in lines in the cold! That’ll kill your party quicker than anything.”

“There’s something definitely happening out there,” he continued.

Meanwhile Mr. Cogan was continuing his proclamation.

“I’ll give up nothing!” he said. “You know what’s going to cure the world? It’s people going about their daily business!”

“It’s crazy here!” said Sean Bumgarner, a 34-year-old magazine art director, who is one of the creative talents behind Spank, a xeroxed gay art ’zine (remember those?) that was playing host to the night’s revelry. “We’re definitely in a downturn, and everyone is out.”

Outside these walls, all you hear about is the sagging economy and stimulus packages. Inside, things were … stimulated!

“Wait, is that guy naked?” asked Mark Damien, a 44-year-old writer, whose jaw dropped to the floor when he confirmed his first impression. “Uh, I guess things have loosened up a bit.”

The naked man was named Tony. When asked for two names, he offered, “Naked Tony.”

So, Tony, is the gay scene getting its edge back?

“There are pockets of it,” the 36-year-old murmured.

FORMIKA’S CABINET

Over the past few months, while the straight party scene has been left for dead, gay nights and venues look like they are surviving, with new ones sprouting up everywhere. And, in some cases, like this night at the Hose, they really are Events (not vodka promotions!) with Themes! There is buzz! Costumes! Sleaze! There is planning, for a whole week before, aimed at getting into the right place at the perfect time of the night.

“Given the news about the economy that came out of the late summer and fall, when we were in November, I was saying that all of us have to hope for a mild winter,” said Bob Pontarelli, the longtime co-owner of Chelsea gay bar Barracuda and of the very gay-friendly Elmo restaurant on Seventh Avenue. “I was anticipating a perfect storm of cold weather and the economy. And then we had a worse winter than we’ve had in five years. So it’s been very, very, very cold and add to that the recession. But you know what? We haven’t been affected by a percentage point. In some places, we’re doing better. What I was worried about actually hasn’t happened, and it hasn’t affected us.”

According to some of his patrons, the downturn has, if anything, redirected their budgets to Going Out.

“I mean, we’ll skip going out to dinner and go out for drinks instead now,” said Christian, a 27-year-old in fashion PR, to his 27-year-old friend Jon at Barracuda on Friday night.

They both agreed, emphatically, that giving up on their night on the Crawl, whether it be on Eighth Avenue or Avenue A, was not an option.

Michael Formika Jones has been promoting gay-themed parties and nightclub evenings for 18 years in New York, but has found himself without much to do over the last three years.

“Oh I’m loving the recession!” he said. “I’m jumping on this recession bandwagon. I haven’t done a big party. Period. In three years.”

But in the next eight weeks, he’s booked three big events. One of them is at 55 Gansevoort, a two-floor restaurant and a loft apartment above it, as well as a basement bar. It’s always been one of those straight, bottle-service type clubs on weekends before.

“Buh-bye to that!” Mr. Jones chirped. “No more $15 drinks!”

He’ll be opening it up for a Saturday party.

“My take on all of this is after the crackdown with the Giuliani era, it affected the way nightlife was run. A lot of venues had to take the bridge-and-tunnel tourist dollar on Saturday night,” he said. “Now in recession big venues are losing weekend business, so they’re opening up their weekend business to promoters for stuff that wasn’t open to the gays before.”

“Hey, remember, a recession is a gay man’s vacation.”

BREAKFAST AT BERGDORF’S

“The bar scene hasn’t been affected at all,” said Andrew Suarez, a 25-year-old waiter and Marymount student whom we found shopping at Bergdorf Goodman Men’s on Monday afternoon who was telling us about his weekend of drinking in Hell’s Kitchen. “I was just partying this weekend for my birthday? And it was absolutely, completely, you-couldn’t-walk-through-it packed.”

Nor, he said, have he or his friends stopped shopping.

“I definitely still have to shop” he said. “It’s got to be done. We can’t let it affect the way we live. I’m a shopper, and most of my gay friends are.”

“I haven’t bought a full-priced piece of merchandise in the last two months because there are so many sales,” said trim 28-year-old Ken Gillett, who was shopping at Bloomingdale’s on Monday afternoon, where we heard a hyped-up remix of Madonna’s “Give it 2 Me” blasting over the store’s speakers. “I’ve actually been shopping more, I think!”

“It’s a better time to shop,” said John Traynor, a 42-year-old human relations recruiter who lives on the Upper West Side. “You might as well buy stuff you wouldn’t ordinarily be able to buy.”

And the sales are everywhere: 40 percent off a John Varvatos white button-down listed at $225; 50 percent off a black Polo sports coat for $1,195; 40 percent off a Marc by Marc Jacobs $198 blue V-neck sweater; 40 percent off a $395 Michael Kors zip-up turtleneck sweater. And for the investment-minded, deep discounts on the coveted embroidered and individually numbered Vilebrequin seashell swim trunks at Barneys!

At the Bergdorf Goodman Men’s store on Fifth Avenue, sales associates in the building said the second floor, which is the Wall Street man’s floor of choice—full of trousers and suits and ties—has been a ghost town since the recession began. Meanwhile, the building’s third floor, which features labels like Alexander McQueen and Thom Browne—a salesman described the floor as being “owned” by the gays—has been bustling the same as ever.

“I just spent $2,000, but I’d like to keep that to once a month now,” said Paul Vinci, a 43-year-old insurance man from Chelsea who was shopping for himself and his partner. “It used to be $10,000 a month, so we’ve scaled back.”

Items included in his shopping spree: two black beaded bracelets for $750; a Jil Sander sweater; a Dolce & Gabanna sweater; a pair of slacks; and shoes.

RECESSIONOMICS FOR GAYS

The day Lehman Brothers fell, the downtown-demimonde nightlife promoter Chi Chi Valenti, the genius behind such New York legends as Night of a Thousand Stevies and Click+Drag, wrote a note to her message board.

“If there’s one part of this week’s economic implosion that sure smells like a silver lining from here, it is the prospect of we New Yorkers finally getting a few of our clubs and downtown streets back,” she wrote. “Some of New York’s most enduring clubs have been born in dark financial times indeed, from the Mudd Club during New York City’s near-bankrupcy [sic] to our own Jackie 60 during the LAST Bush Presidency/Recession. High commercial rents were among the prime villains that drove creative clubs and nights virtually OUT of Manhattan in the last five years, and hopefully a poorer city government will no longer have the resources to spend on venue harassment. Throw in almost certain Cabaret Law reform, and a sense of impending doom. Can a new Golden Age in clubs be far behind?”

During better times, Michael Formika Jones said, “they’ll fine you for everything. Booty on the bar. Having candles lit. Being overcapacity by 10 people. Not having paper towels behind the bars. If you’re a busy gay club, you’re getting fined for every little thing so should shut you down. But they’ve got other things to worry about. This is good times for us!”

We checked in with John D’Emilio, professor of women’s and gender studies at the University of Illinois-Chicago, and author of Sexual Politics, Sexual Communities: The Making of a Homosexual Minority in the United States, 1940-1970, to see if Ms. Valenti might be proven right.

“In the ’70s, for the first time in New York, investing in gay businesses such as a bar or a disco or a bathhouse could actually be a profitable and an attractive investment for gay men because they’re not dealing with either the police or organized crime,” he said. “In New York, there were more gay bars opening and gay bathhouses and the disco scene develops by ’73 or ’74. The city was in economic crisis, but gay male society was thriving.”

And in Chicago and San Francisco, he’s studied surges in gay venues and drag performances during the real Great Depression. So, now?

“I’d say it’s intriguing, but I don’t know if you can draw a big conclusion about it.”

But outside of the strict historiographical constraints observed by Mr. D’Emilio, other parts of academe were giving us a little more love.

“During a recession, there’s a greater emphasis on tangibility,” said Richard Goldstein, a pop culture professor at Hunter and the former executive editor at The Village Voice. “When there’s money in the economy, you’ll take more chances and you’ll invest in things that are speculative. But everyone speculated! That’s why the banks crashed.”

To Mr. Goldstein, profiles on singles Web sites like Manhunt are a form of Internet speculation—that is, it’s virtual, it’s risky, you can’t really ever size up if that picture is really what that guy looks like. You know, like E-Trade, with the emphasis on trade.

“Now, there’s a need for things you can touch and see in front of you and whose value you gauge with your eyes and, you know, through the vibe one person gives to another which is physical, which you can’t get when it’s virtual,” he continued. “There have been too many thrills in the last decade, so I wouldn’t be surprised if the style of cruising is less virtual and more tangible.”

So, off the Internet and into the bars?

On Saturday night, a bit after midnight, two boys were testing out this theory at Cake Shop, a cafe on Ludlow Street that converts its basement into a gay punk party named Queers, Beers and Rears once a month. The two boys temporarily broke off a make-out session in order to chat.

“I think I go out more now!” said 24-year-old Josh Dull, who was wearing a Ghostbusters II trucker hat, a tight T-shirt and red suspenders fastened to skinny jeans. “I grew up poor, and this doesn’t bother me. Now everyone feels how I’ve felt my entire life.”

Around this time, the people running the door at Cake Shop wouldn’t allow any more people in—the basement had reached capacity. Near the bathroom, 24-year-old Max Steele, a hipster with a mop of red curly hair who was stripped down to nothing but a pair of black briefs, was waiting in an impossible line.

“Gays love a recession because we hate the capitalist economy that’s found in the hetero-normative patriarchy anyways,” said the young man, a law-firm drone by day and a performer and go-go dancer by night. “I say burn the motherfucker down! Right? Fuck Prop 8! Who gives a fuck? We should burn down Wall Street and take over New York.”

He took a sobering breath.

“Gays are the only people with dispensable money—dispensable income or whatever?” he said, telling us he was a Sarah Lawrence grad. “Well, not for me personally.”

So we wondered what he was doing out.

“I’m like $60,000 in debt from school,” he said. “I’m fucked anyway.”

jkoblin@observer.com

Additional reporting by Joe Pompeo

Pierre Berge, the longtime partner of Yves Saint Laurent, is getting ready to finally sell off the late designer's highly prized art collection, which took over 30 years to acquire and includes works by Picasso, Mondrian and Matisse. [Vogue UK] 

Bloomingdale's announced that it will begin to hold monthly open-sees--the first being on Feb. 6--for up-and-coming designers in women's ready-to-wear and accessories. [WWD]  

MTV's House of Style is reportedly returning to the network with either Bar Rafaeli or Naomi Campbell hosting. [Page Six] 

The Sock Man (real name Marty Rosen) on St. Marks Place doesn't mind that Chloe Sevigny called him "the grumpiest man on earth" and a "sock Nazi." [NY Daily News] 

Today fans of Ms. Savit’s designs include Beyoncé, Elton John and the teenagers trawling Soho. “I work with Michael Kors, I work with Ralph Lauren, I work with Vera Wang. This is within the past six months,” said Ms. Savitt the other day, dressed in this season’s wide-legged jeans. For over three decades, she was in business with her sisters Michelle and Wynne under the label M + J Savitt, but she struck out on her own in December of 2007.

“It took me 30 years to figure a way to do it,” Ms. Savitt said with a laugh. “One sister [Michelle] was getting married and moving to California and I didn’t want to stay there and work with the other sister [Wynne]. That’s what it boiled down to.

“When I left, I took nothing. I just said, ‘Buh-bye, it’s all you. I want to do my own thing.’” But the exit was not completely seamless. On Oct. 7, 2008, according to papers filed in New York’s Southern District Court, Wynne sued Ms. Savitt for trademark infringement.

“She believed that she owned my name, but she doesn’t own my name,” Janis said firmly.

Recent designs are going in two directions, the first “all based on chains … that look like braided pieces, like a little girl who braids her hair.” Recently she sent some antique cameos to a shop in California that normally fixes up car parts. The resulting bib necklace is edgy, but classic.

The second is centered around classic pins. “Take your mother’s brooch, a diamond brooch—hopefully she had a big one,” Ms. Savit said. “Then you put broad brass and steel chains with it to make it more casual and updated.”

Ms. Savitt’s inspirations include her father, Paul Savitt, an artist who lives in Soho. “He’s the kind of person you can ask about anything and he’ll know the answer,” she said.

A large photograph self-portrait of Mr. Savitt hangs in her midtown apartment near the front door. His eyes are wide and his mouth tight. The image breaks and squirms in certain places as if bugs are climbing out of him. “He’s never shown his work, he’s never sold his work,” his daughter said. “He just warehouses it.”

Not so Ms. Savitt, who is recently exploring a new side of commerciality with a brass cuff bracelet that looks like a can of Budweiser. “A classic American label,” she pointed out. So far she has melded the beer can to the cuff; next she will attach strands of diamonds. “I like the idea of recycling and making it into something cool. Like, ‘I rescued this beer can and turned it into a $5,000 piece of jewelry!’ No, I’m just kidding. ‘I turned it into something beautiful.’”

For the past year, Ms. Savitt has been on a jewelling jag, filling up armloads of boxes and several large tables in her home office with new pieces. But she still finds time to fish and rake for clams, wearing waders in Shinnecock bay with an 80-year-old friend who “knows all the good spots.” She’s also fond of staring at the sky.

“I take the train down to Battery Park, have a coffee there and look out,” she said. “New York’s a great place. ”

PHOTOGRAPH: John Huba</p

Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana have a crush on "I Kissed a Girl" singer Katy Perry. [Vogue UK]

A trend emerging from Italy's runways: "botanical." [Vogue UK]

Sean Connery is rumored to be the next face of Louis Vuitton, which has in the past tapped former Russian president Mikhail Gorbachev, Keith Richards and Francis Ford Coppola for its ads. [WWD] 

Bloomingdale's is coming to Dubai. [DNR] 

Womens' Wear Daily reported today that the management of the 59th Street flagship reached a deal with leaders of the Local 3 branch of the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union that "eliminates any possibility of a strike being called against the retailer."

Bloomingdale's and RWDSU have been trapped in negotiations over a new contract for the 2,000-plus workers at the Midtown branch since the previous one expired on March 1. Last week, the union authorized an employee strike if an agreement was not reached by the May 1 extended deadline.

Though the main sticking point of the talks, health care coverage, has not yet been resolved according to the RWDSU spokesman, the rest of the four-year contract has been decided and the union has allowed two more weeks to hammer out the health plan.

That was a close one. Bloomies' last brush with organized labor activism was an employee walkout 43 years ago.

Crain's reported on Friday that the Retail, Wholesale, and Department Store Union authorized a strike action at the Bloomingdale's flagship on 59th Street to amp up the pressure on management to increase employee benefits before the union's current contract expires on April 30.

The union wants Bloomingdale's to keep the current health plan, which is managed by the union, rather than switch to an HMO and is also pushing for pay increases.

We stopped by Bloomie's over the weekend and spoke to a couple of the department store's 2,000-plus workers about the possibility of the first walkout there in 43 years. The sales people were pretty in the dark, but all said they are prepared to walk out on Thursday if an agreement is not reached.

"No one knows yet; but, don't worry, we'll let you know," said a woman working behind one of the perfume counters.

"We're striking for better benefits," she said, “Want to come support us?"

Only the flagship will be affected, because other locations are not unionized.

"We might [strike]," said another employee in the handbag section, which was packed with foreigners taking advantage of the abundant discounts in Manhattan for those paying with international currencies. "If we do, basically the entire store would be closed."

The cast-iron building that boasts Bloomingdale’s SoHo store, 504 Broadway, has sold for $53 million to the Irish firm Sloane Capital, led by financier Aidan Brooks, property records show.

Mr. Brooks, wielding the mighty euro in the days of the not-so-mighty dollar, seems to be something of a connoisseur of buildings that hold high-end retail stores. In September, he forked over $275 million to buy Two Rodeo, an upscale Beverly Hills shopping center on Rodeo Drive that’s home to Tiffany & Co. and Versace, among others. In 2005, the Irishman paid about $80 million for the castlelike Rhinelander Mansion at 867 Madison Avenue, home to a Polo Ralph Lauren store.

Bloomingdale’s made headlines when it opened its doors at the approximately 90,000-square-foot store in 2004, reportedly seeing unexpected throngs of shoppers flood into the former Canal Jean Co. location in its first months.

The deed listed the buyer as Sloane Broadway LLC, with Mr. Brooks signing for the property purchased from longtime owner Ira Russack. Requests for comment to both Mr. Russack and Sloane Capital were not returned.