Somerset Collection is a superregional, luxury shopping mall, located in

Metro Detroit The Detroit metropolitan area, often referred to as Metro Detroit, is a major metropolitan area in the U.S. State of Michigan, consisting of the city of Detroit and its Southeast Michigan, surrounding area. There are varied definitions of the a ...

, in

Troy, Michigan Troy is a city in Oakland County, Michigan, United States. Its population was 87,294 at the 2020 U.S. census, making Troy the most populous city in the county and the 13th most-populous municipality in the state. Troy is a northern suburb of Me ...

with more than 180 specialty stores. Somerset Collection, developed, managed, and co-owned by The

Forbes ''Forbes'' () is an American business magazine owned by Integrated Whale Media Investments and the Forbes family. Published eight times a year, it features articles on finance, industry, investing, and marketing topics. ''Forbes'' also r ...

Company, is among the most profitable malls in the United States not owned by a

real estate investment trust A real estate investment trust (REIT) is a company that owns, and in most cases operates, income-producing real estate. REITs own many types of commercial real estate, including office and apartment buildings, warehouses, hospitals, shopping cente ...

.Groover, Joel (June 1, 2004
Privacy Please
. ''Retail Traffic'' Penton Media. Retrieved on September 3, 2007. Out of the 100 most profitable malls, 76 are owned by real estate investment trusts.

History

In 1969,

Saks Fifth Avenue Saks Fifth Avenue (originally Saks & Company; colloquially Saks) is an American luxury department store chain headquartered in New York City and founded by Andrew Saks. The original store opened in the F Street shopping district of Washington ...

opened a stand-alone store on Big Beaver Road in Troy, an affluent suburb 20 miles northwest of downtown Detroit. A one-floor upscale "Somerset Mall" designed by Louis G. Redstone Associates, was built onto the existing Saks, anchored by it and a new

Bonwit Teller Bonwit Teller & Co. was an American luxury department store in New York City, New York, founded by Paul Bonwit in 1895 at Sixth Avenue and 18th Street, and later a chain of department stores. In 1897, Edmund D. Teller was admitted to the par ...

. Thirty five additional stores opened, including I. Miller, Abercrombie & Fitch, Mark Cross, and FAO Schwarz. Bonwit Teller significantly renovated its store in 1988, only to close in 1990 after the chain went bankrupt. In 1991-1992 the center was renamed Somerset Collection, a second level was added, and

Neiman Marcus Neiman Marcus Group, Inc. is an American integrated luxury retailer headquartered in Dallas, Texas, which owns Neiman Marcus, Bergdorf Goodman, Horchow, and Last Call. Since September 2021, NMG has been owned by a group of investment compani ...

opened a store on the site of the razed Bonwit Teller. Completed in August 1992, Saks was renovated and expanded with more luxury stores, like

Tiffany's Tiffany & Co. (colloquially known as Tiffany's) is a high-end luxury jewelry and specialty retailer, headquartered on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. It sells jewelry, sterling silver, porcelain, crystal, stationery, fragrances, water bottles, watc ...

, opening their doors.About Somerset: History and Information
''The Somerset Collection''. Retrieved on October 8, 2008. Following the success of the revamped mall, co-owners Forbes/Cohen Properties and Frankel Associates opened a new three-story $30,000,000, 940,000 sq ft expansion across from Somerset Mall on August 11, 1996, designed by JPRA Architects.

Michigan Michigan () is a U.S. state, state in the Great Lakes region, Great Lakes region of the Upper Midwest, upper Midwestern United States. With a population of nearly 10.12 million and an area of nearly , Michigan is the List of U.S. states and ...

's first

Nordstrom Nordstrom, Inc. () is an American luxury department store chain headquartered in Seattle, Washington, and founded by John W. Nordstrom and Carl F. Wallin in 1901. The original Wallin & Nordstrom store operated exclusively as a shoe store, a ...

and a

Hudson's The J. L. Hudson Company (commonly known simply as Hudson's) was an upscale retail department store chain based in Detroit, Michigan. Hudson's flagship store, on Woodward Avenue in Downtown Detroit (demolished October 24, 1998), was the tallest ...

(converted to

Marshall Field's Marshall Field & Company (commonly known as Marshall Field's) was an upscale department store in Chicago, Illinois. Founded in the 19th century, it grew to become a large chain before Macy's, Inc acquired it in 2005. Its eponymous founder, Mar ...

and then

Macy's Macy's (originally R. H. Macy & Co.) is an American chain of high-end department stores founded in 1858 by Rowland Hussey Macy. It became a division of the Cincinnati-based Federated Department Stores in 1994, through which it is affiliated wi ...

) anchored the three-story expansion, named Somerset North. When Marshall Fields was converted to Macy's in 2006, Somerset became one of only three malls in the country to host all four department stores. Connecting the two malls is a 700 ft (0.21 km) enclosed bridge known as the "Skywalk" over Big Beaver Road. The enclosed, climate-controlled skybridge was one of the first of its kind in the country, featuring moving walks to move shoppers between Somerset Collection South and Somerset Collection North. In 2004, Somerset South, the original part of the Collection, was renovated. The mall features lighting by Paul Gregory (Focus Lighting), a continuous skylight, glass elevators, and fountains designed by WET. The Somerset Collection includes several notable sculptures, including a Finnish Sorvikivi Floating Stone fountain. Mall at Millenia, in Orlando, Florida, also designed by JPRA Architects, was based on Somerset Collection and is similar in design. Neither mall has kiosks. In December 2009, the Forbes Company acquired an adjacent site on which an open-air mixed-use development known as the Pavilions of Troy was proposed. Although plans were approved, the project did not move forward, and no further plans were announced. In 2012, calling it “strategic capital investments”, Saks renovated its store after it identified the Somerset location as having “high growth potential”. In 2016, Chick-fil-A opened a location in the Peacock Cafe food court, the first location in Metro Detroit that was not at the food court of a college campus or airport. In 2017, Zara opened its first store in Michigan on the first and second floors of the Macy's wing. While the Collection was temporarily shuttered due to the 2020

COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic, also known as the coronavirus pandemic, is an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The novel virus was first identi ...

, Chick-fil-A operated a massive 18-wheeler mobile drive-thru truck in the otherwise empty Collection parking lot near Macy's.

Shops and restaurants

The Somerset Collection contains of

gross leasable area In architecture, construction, and real estate, floor area, floor space, or floorspace is the area (measured as square feet or square metres) taken up by a building or part of it. The ways of defining "floor area" depend on what factors of the buil ...

with over 180 stores. The four department store anchors are:

(240,000 sq ft (0.02 km²)) and

(300,000 sq ft (0.03 km²)) in Somerset North, and

(141,000 sq ft (0.01 km²)) and

(160,000 sq ft (0.01 km²)) in Somerset South. The third level of the Somerset Collection North features a food court called The Peacock Cafes, featuring 10 restaurants and seating for 650 customers.

Services

Somerset provides valet parking and a full-service concierge staff. The concierge service includes a variety of services such as gift wrapping, stroller and wheelchair rental.

Wi-Fi Wi-Fi () is a family of wireless network protocols, based on the IEEE 802.11 family of standards, which are commonly used for local area networking of devices and Internet access, allowing nearby digital devices to exchange data by radio wav ...

access is available in the Peacock Cafe, in addition to Wi-Fi access inside the

and other stores.

Special events

Special events are hosted at Somerset Collection year-round. The layout includes stages for the performing arts. The special events include

yoga Yoga (; sa, योग, lit=yoke' or 'union ) is a group of physical, mental, and spiritual practices or disciplines which originated in ancient India and aim to control (yoke) and still the mind, recognizing a detached witness-consci ...

classes, special savings, Santa visits during the Christmas season, fashion shows, and other events sponsored by the Collection and individual stores. In 2011, the Forbes Company debuted a group of pop-up mini-shops called Somerset Collection CityLoft in Downtown Detroit, specifically at the Lower Woodward Avenue Historic District, which had been a major Detroit shopping district. Various stores from Somerset have opened pop up shops on Merchant's Row in the 1200 to 1400 block of Woodward Avenue, generally open the last Thursday to Saturday of the month from June through August, and occasionally September. In 2012 this concept was extended to the Christmas season, with CityLoft Holiday "Yappy" Hour.

Gallery

SomersetCollectionNeimanMarcus.jpg, Somerset South at Neiman Marcus Somers8.jpg, View from Somerset North's Peacock Cafe toward Somerset South somersetsign.jpg, Somerset Collection North sign Somersetsouthsculpture.jpg, Sculpture at Somerset South somersetgranitesphere.jpg, One of the two

Granite Granite () is a coarse-grained ( phaneritic) intrusive igneous rock composed mostly of quartz, alkali feldspar, and plagioclase. It forms from magma with a high content of silica and alkali metal oxides that slowly cools and solidifies under ...

Sorvikivi Floating Stone spheres at Somerset Collection North.

Notes

References and further reading

* * * * {{Shopping malls in Michigan Shopping malls in Oakland County, Michigan Shopping malls established in 1969 Buildings and structures in Troy, Michigan 1969 establishments in Michigan