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NY LAND CO. HERALD CENTER. FERDINAND MARCOS
The Facts What it cost: $70 million When it opened: March 29, 1985 What it is: A 260,000-square- foot shopping center in a 9-story building at the corner of 34th Street and Broadway Present vacancy rate: About 50 percent IT'S LATE AFTERNOON in New York's "Tall Mall" and a lone clerk in an expensive men's shop does calisthenics on the empty sales floor, swinging at the waist, his arms flapping in the air.
And there's literally no one minding the store at a small emporium selling hand-painted T-shirts and sweaters on the center's "Columbus Avenue," a misnomer considering the quiet of its corridors.
An iron grating shutters another shop - it hasn't opened all day. Artful murals obscure vacant store fronts. So does that mean Jimmy Sheppard, owner of the boutique, Shep's House of Fashion, is crazy? That is, is he crazy to be opening a second store here, now?
The tall, bearded designer and retailer, his arms bedecked in jade jewerly, his neck hung with gold medallions, poses the question bemusedly in his little boutique, filled with his filmy, glittery gowns and chunky costume jewelery.
Like many other surviving retailers here, Sheppard clings to hope. He talks about Herald Center's potential; he dreams of growing along with the mall, as he launches his new men's store.
It will be two years ago this month that Herald Center opened its doors with great fanfare. But despite its nine soaring stories, it's a project that never really got off the ground.
Some of the mall's early handicaps have been well-chronicled: faulty design, with an office building-like facade and an interior that lacks openness; the difficulty of attracting New Yorkers to shop in a vertical mall; insufficient advertising and promo tion; and what many say was too upscale a retail mix for the mass-market Herald Square neighborhood.
But these difficulties now seem almost minor, or, at least, correctible with time, money and patience, if only Herald Center's most unusual problem could be resolved: determining who owns it.
Exactly one year ago, retailing and international politics collided head-on, and the mall still staggers from the impact. Following the overthrow of Ferdinand Marcos as president of the Philippines, Herald Center was...