Walking up to the entrance of the new Brooks Brothers store in downtown Austin‘s Scarbrough building, I smiled.
I thought to myself, this is how downtown retail should look and feel. The entrance has a gilded age grandeur that we’re no longer accustomed to in a downtown retailer. Big window displays run the length of the building. You’re greeted by brass doors with elegant hardware. It’s the details that matter.
6th & Congress is arguably the most visible intersection in Austin, Texas. For years, two of the four corners of this intersection have been vacant: the ground floor of the Scarbrough building and the ground floor of the Littlefield building. The Apple pop-up store gave us a glimmer of how much better the city feels without prominent retail vacancies.
Candidly, I wasn’t all that jazzed about Brooks Brothers announcing they were taking this space. I wasn’t against it, rather, it’s not a store I shop at. I was mostly excited to have a well established retailer take up the space. So, this evening, I headed over to the new store after wrapping up at the office …and then, I see the store was irritatingly closed. It was 7:45pm. [Rant: I think downtown’s retail hours of operation are completely fubar. Retail businesses seeking a broad base of customers should be open for business when people are not at work.]
Business hours aside, now that I see Brooks Brothers in the space – taking the entirety of the ground floor – I think they’ve hit it out of the park. The store looks great, and as a result our city looks even better.
About Jude Galligan
It looks awesome! I wanna save up for a really good suit… If only we could get more retail like this on Congress/throughout Downtown.
Ditto-Ditto-Ditto. Welcome to town and thank you for bringing alive one of Austin’s architectural treasures. A perfect match. As a small retailer it is always bittersweet but corporate investment brought the results this corner historically deserved. Kudo’s to DAA for helping facilitate.
I go to the Gold’s Gym below it, so it’s been fun to watch the store take shape every day. Beautiful store! Great window displays. A bit conservative for me, but I’ll shop there. Very New England style, with a men’s outfit with shirt, sweater, tie, then a wooly jacket over that, wrap it with a scarf. Layers look good but it’s not that cold here, guys!
Agree! I’m hoping this store will mean we’ll have access to a wide selection of tropical-weight wools and other clothing items that are nice but that we can actually wear here in Texas for more than three days out of the year.
Are you confused, or am I? You said the store was closed because of store hours but I’ve been waiting patiently for 8 months for this store to open and I don’t believe they’ve had their opening yet, have they? I actually e-mailed them this morning (without having seen your post) and asked when they were going to open. They said they were supposed to open 11-1-11, but that didn’t happen so they’re opening this weekend. Are you saying they’ve already opened?
nope, i didn’t get in. they have one set of doors that can be opened but the next set of doors were locked.
went in today…they were very much open