H&M to lease former Apple store in Chicago

The fashion brand chose the space, which has been empty for five years.

Swedish fashion retailer H&M will open a store at the Apple Store former location on North Michigan Avenue in Chicago. The fashion brand chose the space, which has been empty for five years, to relocate its flagship store, located four blocks north.

H&M is leasing most of the space formerly housed the Apple Store. The lease at 679 N. Michigan Ave. – is one of the biggest deals in Chicago’s retail real estate market in the past few years.

The Swedish brand will have to halve its store space from 60,000 to 30,000 square feet by changing locations. After closing in the Mag Mile neighborhood, the vacancy rate, which reached 30 percent after the pandemic, will still increase. Nevertheless, the brand still remains at Mag Mile, unlike the fashion giants Gap, Uniqlo and Banana Republic, which left the retail corridor.

The Apple Store opened at 679 N. Michigan in 1997 and has been open for about 20 years. In 2017, the company moved its store to another area, expanding its leased space.

As for H&M, the company has long been eyeing the space on N. Michigan Ave. With the relocation of its flagship, the company will cut rental costs, continuing a trend to “optimize spending” amid an exodus of customers to the Internet and declining consumer purchasing power.