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Duane Reade Opening at 225 Lafayette on July 31

6:33am July 27th, 2010 | 11 Comments

Just in case you didn’t already feel surrounded by the Duane Reade empire, get ready for the extravagant new mall-sized “flagship” outpost coming to the corner of Lafayette and Spring Street. Large posters on site advertise the official July 31 (Saturday) opening date. And store signage is now secured above the entrance.

From street level, the interior looks more like a fancy department store with thirty-foot ceilings than a drug store.  Duane Reade is definitely pushing to go upscale.  But can we expect the same sub-par service and long register lines that plague every other location? We’ll soon find out.

Prior to Duane Reade, 225 Lafayette (aka 60 Spring) was rented to the sole U.S. location of denim purveyors Parasuco.  The boutique shuttered back in April, and work on the drugstore has continued ever since.  Long before any of these companies occupied the space, it was the home of the East River Savings Bank.

Founded in 1848, the East River Savings Bank is often considered one of the city’s oldest banks.  By the time 225 Lafayette was built in 1927, the then eighty-year-old financial institution moved into the ground floor.  The structure itself was designed by Cass Gilbert, the same architect behind the iconic Woolworth Building.  Two decades later, E.C. Comics had offices on the seventh floor.  The comic book company was responsible for some of the greats, including Mad and Tales from the Crypt. In 2004, however, this rich history was converted into overpriced condo living.

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Filed under: Boogie Beat
  • guest

    I believe Parasuco owns the retail space. They are making more $ as a landlord.

  • http://twitter.com/penetrode Chris Park

    I live directly across the street from this building and it’s obviously going to put a strain on the mom ‘n pops 50 footsteps away from each other. I’ve talked to the owners and of course they’re dreading the opening and feel their demise is inevitable. Such is life in this amusement park we live in… At least the space wasn’t turned into a bar.

  • http://evgrieve.com EV Grieve

    Well, I’m no Duane Reade fan…. However, the customer service seems to be much improved at the NEW DR locations, such as that monstrosity on Union Square and the one in the former Staple’s space by the Seaport.

    Still. I hope DR doesn’t kill off all the mom and pops nearby….

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  • lise laperiere

    Oour NYC PRASUCO flagship store on Spring&Lafayette was a 5 year dream in the making.Offers to lease or buy our property started coming Within a week of our opening.I questioned the brokers”this location sat empty for a long time so what changed?”The response was “they didn’t have your vision!” Now that they see the Parasuco store they see the beauty and potential of the space and location.I was almost 4,when we sailed from Italy to MONTREAL.At 14 the eldest of 6 kids I negotiated a job mopping the floor of a Montreal fashion boutique where discovered my fashion future.Our family was on welfare,My parents were farm people and never got to school, our dad fought in WW2 n always in poor health.
    At 19 with 7K in savings I opened my first store.
    I came up with the idea of prewashing jeans,our 1 bedroom home became Canada’s first jeans laundry n we worked our way out of welfare.In 1975 I came up with stretch denim which the whole world continues to use.
    Imagine our pride when we opened our Parasuco Flagship in the BIG APPLE!The European tourists sought us out but we weren’t attracting enough taffic to our location compared to the traffic on nearby Broadway. Duane Reade was chasing our location for quite sometime and we opted to relocate on nearby Broadway with it’s thousands of passerbys.”Man makes plans and God laughs!” As the recession hit we decided to delay all new store openings.
    We hope to eventually have a new Fagship in this amazing NYC and rehire our wonderful retail team.We look forward to dressing you in the near future.Salvatore Parasuco “founder&designer”

  • Info

    *flagship

  • animk@aol.com

    “any of these companies” you named ONE

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