Retailer Barneys coming to Beverly Hills.

Retailer Barneys coming to Beverly Hills 

Interior demolition work is slated to begin this week on two sizable Beverly Hills commercial buildings that will soon be torn down and replaced with the new West Coast flagship of Barneys New York, an upscale Manhattan-based retail clothiers.

Barneys' new West Coast flagship, with 108,000 square feet of retail space, will be its largest store outside Manhattan, by far, when it opens in 1993.

Actual demolition of the existing office structures, located at 9570 and 9584 Wilshire Boulevard, is expected to begin in late August or early September, reported Irvin Rosenthal, a Barneys senior vice president in New York.

"Our original hope was to adapt the existing structures for use as our store," Rosenthal explained. "But because of a need for additional parking, we decided to demolish them instead and rebuild from scratch."

The property now has 140 surface parking spaces, but that will be expanded to 390 spaces on six subterranean levels.

Meanwhile, right next door, Saks Fifth Avenue is planning to begin construction as early as next month on a major expansion/renovation of its venerable 1938 department store.

Saks owns two sprawling adjacent surface parking lots - one directly behind its store and one behind Barneys' site.

Saks plans a 69,400-square-foot expansion to its existing 140,000-square-foot store, and that expansion will be built on what is now its adjoining surface parking lot.

"Right now we have plenty of excess parking," said Edward Bodde, general manager of Saks Beverly Hills. "But once that expansion is built, our demand (for parking) will increased and our supply of parking will be decreased."

To remedy that approaching discrepancy, Saks is seeking approval from the City of Beverly Hills to build three levels of subterranean parking under its surface parking lot across the street - the lot directly behind Barney's site.

Saks had hoped to build an above-grade parking deck on that site, but city planners decided such a project would create too much noise for local residents.

"The city and residents felt it was important to maintain the surface parking as a buffer zone between the commercial and residential areas," Bodde said. "We've been in business here since 1938, so we want to meet our needs in a way that will keep things livable for everybody else, too."

In addition to Saks' new parking structure and store expansion, an extensive renovation of Saks' existing 1938 department store is planned. That renovation project calls for the installation of escalators, which were considered middle class in 1938 and thus omitted from the store's original design.

Upscale department stores of that era instead transported their customers between floors in elevators run by uniformed operators. Saks has since discontinued its operators, as have other old-line department stores, such as Bullocks Wilshire. But Saks' elevators remain.

Although construction of Barneys' new flagship and Saks' expansion/renovation will be undertaken simultaneously, Bodde insisted that situation is purely coincidental.

"These are totally separate projects," he said. "We just happen to be going through the process together."

Officials at both Barneys and Saks claimed to be very supportive of one another's projects. The two stores will complement one another, they said, by bringing more shoppers to the area.

Meanwhile, the Custom Shop Shirtmakers, a custom-tailor men's shop, was the final tenant to vacate Barneys' two soon-to-be-demolished commercial buildings. That store shut its doors at 9580 Wilshire last week, after 31 years in business at the same location.

The Custom Shop Shirtmakers is actually an 81-store chain based in New York City, which plans to reopen at another Beverly Hills store on Rodeo Drive.

PHOTO : Barneys Beverly Hills: Artist's rendering of the retailer's flagship Southern California store