Business & Tech

Crowds Line Up For Luxury Store

It's the first day for the first Neiman Marcus in the East Bay.

Olivia Florence was there for the opening of Neiman Marcus in Walnut Creek Friday.

The Bay Point woman didn't buy. "There were a couple of pieces of jewelry that I might like," she mused, "a pair of earrings that, if I can't live without them, I'll be back." And, she added, "my 9-year-old (daughter) is dying to come."

Florence came with her friend Annmarie Kearney of Walnut Creek, who pronounced the new store "incredible, very artistic. I would say it's very open, with a lot of beautiful clothing."

There are two main entrances to the new store, from the South Main Street sidewalk and from a Broadway Plaza walkway; the latter were entertained by a Dixieland band whooping it up down the way at the plaza fountain. More than 100 shoppers lined up at each entrance as Neiman Marcus threw open the doors at 10 a.m. Friday. The shoppers streamed in through the store and many streamed right up the escalator under the sun-dappled mobile of 350 strands of butterflies. The employees shook pompoms at the incoming shoppers and then gave the customers red-and-gold pompom souvenirs.

The store means about 200 jobs for the Walnut Creek area. One sales associate told ABC News she screamed when she learned she had scored a Neiman Marcus job.

"The staff can't wait to meet members of the community and give them a magnificent experience," said General Manager Jamie Broadhurst. "This is the community's Neiman Marcus."

Neiman Marcus has an analytics team that will look closely at what customers say they like and don't like.

Broadhurst said a warm welcome from Walnut Creek has made an impression on him, and management has "hired and developed a staff that reflects that, will make people feel welcome."

The store shows off dozens of pieces of art, many by Bay Area artists. Some of them are on display on this Neiman Marcus web page.

Tom Agis of Walnut Creek was there on Day One to buy a gift for his wife. "I'm really impressed," he said. "Everything is so colorful. Everything is so inviting ... Everything is very open and everyone is very friendly … We need to have this to bring more people here, people from other places, like Blackhawk."

Bob and Kathy Ross of Walnut Creek were "carried along" in the crowd of people waiting to get in before 10 on South Main Street. They found it too crowded and said they would come some other day. (By 11 o'clock, there was a reported two-hour wait to get a table at the second-floor cafe.)

Bob Ross wondered why Neiman Marcus hadn't designed a bigger cafe. He also wondered why they didn't put an entrance at the corner of the building in the visible corner of Mount Diablo Boulevard and South Main Street.

Neiman Marcus got a bad review from student journalists a bit down the road at Las Lomas High. Because they got stiffed in a question for information, writers Alex Rossi and Cassie Baloue wrote an open letter to Neiman Marcus noting, in the Las Lomas Page, that some "feared that it (the new luxury store) could bring snobbishness to Walnut Creek and the way we were treated may affirm those fears."

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Alameda architect John Proctor, who designed the Neiman Marcus building, just got a shout-out from his mother on Walnut Creek Patch Facebook.

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