Manhasset’s former Lord & Taylor store will be transformed into a co-working space with a full-service cafe and wellness studio.
The store, which closed its doors last year along with all other Lord & Taylor stores across the country, will be transformed into a SaksWorks space, officials announced in October. Plans submitted to the Town of North Hempstead show SaksWorks occupying the entire three-story building.
SaksWorks is a membership-based company with high-end workspaces that can include restaurants, fitness classes, concierge services and more. Hudson’s Bay, a former parent company of Lord & Taylor, said it will turn some of the now-vacant stores into SaksWorks. The company, the parent company of Saks Fifth Avenue, announced the idea for SaksWorks in August and has two spaces open in Manhattan and one in Greenwich, Connecticut.
“Saks Fifth Avenue has long been associated with elevated and highly personalized service,” Hudson’s Bay CEO Richard Baker said in an August news release. “With SaksWorks, we extend this nearly century-long legacy to this new operating company to meet the moment of hybrid work.”
Officials did not specifically say when the Manhasset location or one in Westchester will be opening, but Hudson’s Bay spokeswoman Trenesa S. Danuser told Newsday the company expects the Manhasset space to open in the first quarter of 2022. Efforts to reach a Hudson’s Bay or SaksWorks representative for further comment were unavailing.
The individual membership costs are $49 for a day pass, $299 for a monthly membership, and $2,999 for an annual membership, officials said.
The Lord & Taylor stores in Manhasset and Garden City were two of the remaining 38 locations the retailer had kept open after its parent company, France-based Le Tote Inc., filed for bankruptcy in the Eastern District of Virginia’s U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Richmond in August 2020.
Bankruptcy rumors had surrounded the 194-year-old company since it closed its 11-story flagship Manhattan store on Fifth Avenue in 2019. Following the closing of a number of locations after officially filing, Le Tote had reported that it was seeking a buyer for the remaining stores.
The two North Shore locations had previously undergone major renovation projects, first announced in 2016.
The Garden City location received an enhanced spa room and additions to its top-floor cafe, completed in 2016, and the Manhasset location received a 38,000-square-foot expansion and additional parking, opening the new developments in late 2018.
