Inside Saks Fifth Avenue’s final days on City Avenue

Sixx King walked up the grand winding staircase, long a centerpiece of Saks Fifth Avenue in Bala Cynwyd.

As King ascended beneath a sparkling chandelier, the Philadelphia film director held his phone aloft, FaceTiming his mom and aunts to show them the sad state of his beloved luxury department store. At the top of the stairs, King was greeted by a phalanx of bare white mannequins on one side, a smattering of faux Christmas trees on another, and lots of empty clothing racks and display cases.

Red signs alerted the few customers present to the “store closing sale,” with the remaining merchandise discounted by an additional 50% from already marked-down prices.

The massive City Avenue storefront is set to close next week, a casualty of its parent company’s Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Employees said the store’s final day will be Wednesday, exactly 74 years and a day since Saks Fifth Avenue opened its original Philadelphia-area location in Center City.

“This is the end of an era,” said King, a customer of 35 years who will miss “the ambience, the customer service.”

“Also just the luxury,” King added. “ Being able to get runway items. … It kept me from going to New York” or to the King of Prussia Mall, about half-hour away.

The Saks Fifth Avenue in Bala Cynwyd is one of 18 Saks stores and three Neiman Marcus locations that are shuttering as their parent company, Saks Global, restructures. In Bala Cynwyd, 50 employees will lose their jobs, according to a layoff notice the company provided to the state government.

The Saks stores in Chevy Chase, Md., and at the American Dream mall in Northern New Jersey also are closing, leaving the closest location in New York. The Neiman Marcus at the King of Prussia Mall is set to remain open.

Saks Global spokespeople have said closure decisions were based on several factors, including store performance and “lease economics.”

The company filed for bankruptcy in January, after racking up billions in debt — some from its 2024 acquisition of Neiman Marcus — and missing massive payments to some of its high-end vendors. Saks Global owed more than $136 million to Chanel, according to court documents, and more than $21 million to Christian Louboutin, among tens of thousands of other creditors.

In early April, the company announced it had secured $500 million in exit financing and expected to emerge from bankruptcy this summer. CEO Geoffroy van Raemdonck said in a statement that its better-than-expected performance in recent months would “ensure a strong future for Saks Global.”

Company spokespeople did not return requests for comment for this article.

“The Saks story is sad,” said Barbara Kahn, a marketing professor at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. The closure of the Bala Cynwyd store, which sits just over the city line in Lower Merion Township, is “another example of this area not sustaining luxury” retail.

In recent years, some high-end brands have closed shops in the city while keeping or opening locations in King of Prussia and Cherry Hill, Kahn noted.

City Avenue lost another high-end department store, albeit one without quite the cachet of Saks, when Lord & Taylor shuttered a standalone location there in 2020 as part of its Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

The Lord & Taylor site, less than half a mile from Saks, has since been replaced by a mixed-use building with 217 luxury apartments, part of a yearslong effort by local leaders to transform the congested corridor into a walkable residential community. The complex, called The Blayr, opened to tenants in late March, and is about 20% leased.

As president and CEO of the City Ave District, the area’s nonprofit business development agency, Bryan Fenstermaker said the store’s closure next week will be bittersweet.

“It’s been an anchor kind of tenant for the district,” Fenstermaker said. “You hate to see things close like that and move on, but I think for the district and the way we’re evolving, it is an opportunity for that [property] to be repositioned.”

The building may sit empty for a while as Saks’ bankruptcy case makes its way through the courts. Fenstermaker said he sees many options for reuse.

Area residents say they want “services and amenities,” Fenstermaker said. “People are looking for additional hotels. Sit-down restaurants, that is another angle that we’ve been pushing hard.”

Another retail tenant could succeed there, he said, since he understands the Saks location did well, despite the company’s broader financial problems. Two years ago, the City Ave District reported that Saks’ sales were so strong in Bala Cynwyd that it had resisted offers to relocate to King of Prussia.

But traditional retail may not be the best fit for such a large building, Fenstermaker said.

“Shopping patterns and shopping habits have changed,” he said. If another retailer were to move in, “maybe it’s not quite a department store.”

For some local consumers, losing Saks represents more than just the closure of a department store.

“It’s just a sign of the times,” said Ellen Nolan, 68, of Penn Valley, who has been a Saks credit card holder since she started working in 1980. She is also a regular customer of the Artur Kirsh Salon, which operated on Saks’ third floor and has since relocated to Narberth.

Back in the day, Nolan said she had so much fun shopping at Saks for makeup, shoes, handbags, and jewelry.

“You could go in there and find something you couldn’t find in other stores,” said Nolan, a retired interior designer. She could run in for a last-minute purchase, instead of ordering online and having to wait days for a delivery.

But in more recent years, Nolan said she’d walk through Saks on her way to hair appointments and move on empty-handed.

“Everything had gotten so expensive,” Nolan said. And the styles “didn’t fit my personality.”

Still, she’s going to miss Saks. She doesn’t love the selection at Suburban Square, she said, and getting to the King of Prussia Mall is a traffic “nightmare.” She’ll be doing more shopping online.

The same goes for Rebecca Rosenberger Smolen since her go-to, Lord & Taylor, closed. The attorney, who works in Bala Cynwyd and lives in Ardmore, occasionally shopped at Saks for special occasions, as well as the Suburban Square Macy’s that closed in 2016.

Buying her professional suits online has meant ordering multiple options in several sizes, trying them on, and then mailing back the rejects.

“It’s a huge hassle,” said Smolen, 58. “It’s nowhere near the enjoyable experience we used to have at a department store.”

Now with no such standalone stores near Bala Cynwyd, she said, “I don’t know what people are going to do, aside from order online or haul out to King of Prussia.”