SAVANNAH, Ga. — The decision was easy for Marc Jacobs International president Robert Duffy.
This city of moss-covered oaks, distinctive architecture and independent spirit had the kind of karma that Marc Jacobs could embrace. The result: a 5,000-square-foot store on Broughton Street that will combine women’s and men’s clothing and accessories with books, gifts and other fun items.
The confluence of old and new epitomizes Savannah. Commercial forces, from the aerospace industry to thriving seaports, are energizing the old Savannah and bringing in new money. An influx of tourists that began more than a decade ago after the city began getting attention as the setting for the best-selling book “Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil” and the film adaptation has not abated and retailing has benefitted.
Urban renewal, much of it led by the Savannah College of Art and Design, is bringing downtown to life and injecting a cool factor that supports a growing retail, restaurant and nightlife scene.
“People don’t realize how sophisticated and affluent Savannah is,” said Duffy, who chose the city for the sixth Marc by Marc Jacobs store (others are in New York, San Francisco, Chicago, Los Angeles and Boston) to open in February. “If I had a choice of vacationing in Palm Beach or Savannah, I’d pick Savannah.”
Savannah has a European flair. The number of tourists — 1.5 million in 1993 — has reached about six million annually with an estimated economic impact of $2.46 billion, according to the Savannah Convention and Visitor’s Bureau.
Many visitors are drawn to the new Jepson Center for the Arts, an ultracontemporary glass-and-white-stone structure designed by Moshe Safdie that is part of the Telfair Museum of Art, the oldest in the South.
“Cultural or historic tourism and vacations is a major trend, among Baby Boomers and retirees,” said Jeff Humphreys, economic forecaster for the Selig Center for Economic Growth at the University of Georgia. Such visitors tend to be high-end consumers.
Infrastructure improvements during the Nineties such as a new convention center and hotels, as well as more direct flights from major cities, have added corporate spenders, as well as leisure visitors to this city of about 140,000 people, Humphreys said.
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The Savannah College of Art and Design, founded in 1978, has reclaimed more than 3 million square feet of space downtown and restored dozens of old buildings, from a Greek Revival railroad office to a Ramada Inn.
“They weren’t all glamorous, some were eyesores, but all were part of Savannah’s rich heritage,” said the college’s president, Paula Wallace.
SCAD’s Savannah Film Festival each fall attracts about 35,000 people, including film luminaries such as Tommy Lee Jones.
The estimated 8,000 art and design students can use SCAD cards that work like debit cards and are honored by businesses on and off campus. SCAD card sales for 2006 total more than $2 million, officials said.
Kathi Rich, a downtown boutique owner, is a Savannah native who left to open a contemporary store in Miami and returned to find a changed city. Rich opened a men’s and women’s store featuring the contemporary fashion she sold in Miami. She became a pioneer on Broughton Street.
“Savannah was always conservative. Everybody dressed the same, in khakis and button-down shirts,” she said. “People didn’t even go to spas — they thought that was freaky. But by 2002, they were ready and starved for fashion.”
Broughton Street, Savannah’s commercial and social center in the first half of the 20th century, declined after World War II, a victim of suburban flight. By the Eighties, Broughton was a mix of vacant department stores and struggling local businesses threatened by crime.
In the mid-Eighties, the city designated Broughton for redevelopment. Federal grants in the form of low-interest loans, combined with streetscape improvement programs, helped bring the area to life. In the mid-Nineties, private investors began buying old buildings. Many were converted to European-inspired upstairs residential/ground-floor retail spaces.
In 2000-01, Gap, Banana Republic and Starbucks opened — still the only national chains — helping to make Broughton Street a destination. The stage was set to attract tourists and mall-weary locals looking for the unique, in product and experience.
Broughton Street is a showcase for independents. Like Marc Jacobs, the new crop mixes fashion, home and accessories in creative ways.
The Paris Market & Brocante is an example of eclectic retail. It’s not just the merchandise — 200-year-old deer heads from a Black Forest hunting lodge, an old Canadian windmill, street signs and other relics from communist-era Hungary — that makes it special. It’s the dreamy Old World ambience.
Stuffed and mounted birds, old binoculars, ledgers and chemistry vials filled with tiny flowers on an antique desk suggest a mad scientist’s lair. A silent film of the Eiffel Tower’s construction runs continuously on the white brick wall behind an over-the-top table setting for eight. His-and-her porcelain sinks overflow with chunks of French milled soaps.
Paula Danyluk, a former SCAD interior design student, opened the 5,000-square-foot, two-level store on Broughton Street in May 2005.
“I wanted to create the unexpected, quirky drama in little scenes with meaning,” she said.
Danyluk travels twice yearly to Paris, Cairo, Budapest and India, scouring markets and bazaars for items that make up half her inventory. She also buys jewelry, hats and bags from estate sales and vintage dealers. She’s added one-of-a-kind vintage cocktail dresses, priced from $300 to $600, all pre-Seventies pieces. Sales are projected at $2.5 million for 2006.
A few doors down is another newcomer, DC2, the first retail venture of a Los Angeles architect and a real estate investor who visited Savannah last year and were smitten. Dean Caldarelli and Dimitri Chami buy real estate, much of it historic property, renovating, designing and furnishing in an eclectic mix of modern and period influences.
Their 2,500-square-foot store opened last October. With dramatic home showstoppers — a four-foot-wide chandelier with 12 shaded lights and an exclusive black-and-white custom couch by John Charles — DC2 also carries affordable accessories, such as Swarovski crystal jewelry and trendy L.A. handbag lines that retail for less than $100. Shoppers can watch the street life from an Italian-style cafe at the front of the store.
The owners, encouraged by sales that doubled first-year goals, are renovating a 5,000-square-foot former antiques store across the street. Set to open in spring 2007, it will make room for expanded accessories and for the first time, men’s and women’s casual clothing from L.A. designers. The existing store will be all women’s apparel and accessories.
Condominiums will be upstairs, and in the basement a lounge will feature an ambience that the owners hope will attract a hip, older crowd.
As more specialty stores open, each has to establish an identity.
“With more rack space competing for only so many local dollars, we have to find a niche,” said Ross Arnsdorff, who launched the women’s boutique Gaucho on Broughton in 1998. “It was so dead, tumbleweeds blew down the sidewalks. But I knew it would come back.”
Heather Kaney started BleuBelle in a former Allied Department Store on Broughton Street in 2004. With its white brick, mosaic tile and hardwood floors, the space suits her “Southern belle aesthetic,” she said. “Our customer wears her grandmother’s pearls and reads Vogue.”
With a wall of premium denim, she also carries contemporary/classic lines such as Diane von Furstenberg, Ella Moss and Susana Monaco. The move to Broughton, from a smaller downtown location, drew more SCAD students and tourists. Sales have grown to about $1.4 million.
In September, Kaney opened BleuBelle Bridal, also on Brougton, which has a Vera Wang shop-in-shop, with bridal and gifts, and gowns by Reem Acra, and Carolina Herrera.
Stephanie Lindley opened James Gunn on Broughton more than a year ago with the goal of offering fun, trendy, affordable goods, emphasis on “affordable.”
“I’m sick of the going rate for every item being $300,” said Lindley, who also designs a casual sportswear line under the James Gunn label, which she carries in the store. With 80 percent of merchandise less than $120, customers experiment, Lindley said.
Several downtown restoration projects are in the works.
The latest project of developer Michael Brown of Durbin Holdings and Marley Management, is Drayton Towers, a 12-story apartment tower built in 1952 that is to be restored to its original Art Moderne glamour. The street-floor retail began to open in November, with some of the same independents on Broughton launching smaller second stores.
The Ellis Square Project, a public-private venture, will redevelop one of six squares laid out by British Gen. James Oglethorpe, who founded Savannah in 1733. It is set to open in fall 2007 with a hotel, condominiums and 50,000 square feet of commercial space.
The new retailers describe Savannah as a city on the rise.
“There’s still some local resistance to new ideas,” Caldarelli said. “It will take time.…It could become fabulous.”