Streaming giant Netflix plans to transform a vacant Lord & Taylor store into one of its first brick-and-mortar entertainment venues, putting on view the latest type of repurposing across the country of defunct department-store mall locations.
The Los Gatos, California-based company said it will turn the 120,000-square-foot space at the King of Prussia Mall in Pennsylvania into what it’s calling Netflix House. The site will include ticketed and non-ticketed experiences for the public, “themed around the Netflix shows most beloved by fans,” as the firm put it in its application to Upper Merion Township officials. Netflix House seeks to include permanent retail and food-and-beverage space, a theater, escape rooms, mixed reality games, live events, and other activities.
“Overall, I think [Netflix House is] a major positive for the market,” Scott Gabrielsen, a CBRE executive vice president in greater Philadelphia who wasn’t involved in the deal, said in an email to CoStar News. “It is a large block of space absorption that further supports that King of Prussia is one of the most highly amenitized submarkets in the region.”
Former anchor stores in U.S. malls are being repurposed for use by not only expanding retailers but for healthcare facilities, housing and entertainment venues, so-called experiential retail that offers visitors activities to engage in. The King of Prussia Mall is owned by Simon Property Group, one of the retail landlords around the country that has been reinventing its properties as mixed-use centers with varied tenant rosters.
Netflix House fits that strategy, though Simon doesn’t actually own the former Lord & Taylor at 180 N. Gulph Road at its regional mall: retail company HBC owns it, as well as many of the liquidated chain’s former store sites. And HBC has been aggressively finding new tenants and new uses for those anchor stores, taking traditional and nontraditional routes to fill those spaces.
HBC — the parent of the Hudson’s Bay and Saks Fifth Avenue chains — and Simon didn’t respond to emails from CoStar News seeking comment on Tuesday. Netflix declined to comment. The Philadelphia Business Journal earlier reported on Netflix’s plans at the King of Prussia Mall.
The subscription-based video service has been experimenting with temporary retail locations, and pop-ups related to its hit TV shows, nationally for several years. But in October, Netflix said it would be debuting two permanent brick-and-mortar locations featuring retail and entertainment tied to its most popular programming. At that time, Netflix said those sites would open in 2025 but didn’t disclose the locations.
In its application for local approval at King of Prussia, Netflix said it will completely renovate the former Lord & Taylor as “‘a multi-format entertainment venue that will be among the first of its kind.” The site will have large, medium and small experience rooms as well as an “immersive” theater that will feature “large amounts of scenery, special effects, sound effects and music, props and live actors.”
The company also provided a detailed “matrix” of what it plans to offer at the various spaces within Netflix House. It includes:
Such activities “will rotate through Netflix House, allowing fans to regularly experience new and different opportunities to engage,” Netflix said.
The planned Netflix House is about 90 miles away, a 1 ½-hour drive, from Fort Monmouth in New Jersey, where Netflix is investing roughly $1 billion to build a large TV-and-movie studio complex on a 300-acre site spanning Eatontown and Oceanport.
Netflix isn’t the first video content provider to try to monetize — and generate interest and loyalty to — its programming with brick-and-mortar locations. Walt Disney Co., Universal, and Nickelodeon have their theme parks, offering experiences to visitors. And Disney has stores, selling merchandise. Netflix has sold goods related to its franchises, including shows such as “Stranger Things,” as well.
HBC had once been the owner of the Lord & Taylor department stores, a chain that was liquidated with all its stores closed. But HBC retained ownership of a number of the vacant physical stores and has had success in re-activating them. For example, J.C. Penney this month relocated one of its stores to a vacant Lord & Taylor space that HBC owns at the Willowbrook Mall in Wayne, New Jersey.
HBC is also redeveloping a former Lord & Taylor location at 609 North Ave. in Westfield, New Jersey, into a mixed-use property with office buildings, retail space and 205 residential units. In 2022, HBC announced plans to convert three former Lord & Taylor stores in the Boston area into space for life science tenants.
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