Saturday, September 16, 2006

Hudson Belk, The Streets at Southpoint, Durham, North Carolina. Lower level entrance. (ctcharlotte.com)

Hudson Belk, The Streets at Southpoint, Durham, North Carolina. Escalator well. (ctcharlotte.com)

Previously on LiveMalls
Hudson Belk, The Streets at Southpoint

8 comments:

  1. What's the difference between regular Belk and Hudson Belk?
    Scott

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  2. A lot less than there used to be, Scott.

    Originally, Hudson Belk, the Raleigh, N.C. based group of stores, was owned jointly by the Hudson and Belk families. They also shared ownrship of several stores known as Belk Leggett in Durham and Chapel Hill. Their corporation was known as the Belk Hudson Leggett Group, and it was semi-autonomous in the Belk organization.

    After 1998, Belk reorganized its corporate structure and the Hudsons went from owning 50% of Hudson Belk to owning 12% of Belk, Inc. The decision was made to keep the Hudson Belk nameplate, even though most of the other co-branded Belk stores disappeared. This was based more or less on the Hudson family's continuous participation in the Belk organization, and the popularity of the stores in the Raleigh-Durham market.

    I think it's a smart decision. Hudson Belk stores have always stood apart from typical Belks, though less so these days than before.

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  3. Interesting. Reminds me of Bullock's and Bullock's Wilshire, although one was more upscale than the other. But to us outsiders, it said nothing.
    Now that Belk has Parisian, is Parisian going away?
    Scott

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  4. Yep, Parisian is being phased out. There was interest in keeping the name, but the sales numbers weren't strong enough to justify two nameplates.

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  5. I'm glad to know with all the department store consolidations that there are still some other department stores out there. At one time, we had nine majors... now we just have four (three if you exclude the rarer Nordstrom). Maybe we'll get a Belk or one of those funny Bon-Ton stores. Even Dillard's wont make a Bay Area entrance.
    Scott

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  6. It's crazy. There used to be so many department stores, now so few. I can't pin it on one thing in particular, but it's a major shift in how we shop.

    It's going to be hard for any new department stores to get into the Bay Area (or almost anywhere else). Federated controls so much of the market and has veto power at most of the malls it operates in.

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  7. My parents just got back from Florida and my mom visited her first Belk. She loved it and now wishes he had one here.
    Scott

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  8. I'm glad to hear your mom liked Belk. The way retail is consolidating these days, she could get her wish :-)

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