Taubman doubling down on luxury at Denver’s Cherry Creek Mall

Cherry Creek Mall and the Denver neighborhood it anchors will have generated some $35 million in sales taxes for 2017 when all the numbers are in, amounting to 4.7 percent of all sales taxes paid in the city. Not bad, for a mall that many predicted would fail when it opened in 1992, says William S. Taubman, COO of Taubman Centers, which owns this high-end mall in the Cherry Creek neighborhood, near the city’s center.

“We were told we would be an utter failure,” said Taubman on Wednesday, at the annual State of Cherry Creek Breakfast, which was covered by The Denver Post. “[Some said] that we just didn’t understand that, basically, the Denver customer was an unsophisticated customer that would never buy clothing unless it was a Wrangler jean."

But the mall’s luxury tenants proved a hit, and more are on the way, Taubman says. Though he declined to name one particular retailer that is to be taking some 40,000 square feet at the mall, he did disclose that Louis Vuitton is doubling its space there. Other anchors are Neiman Marcus and Nordstrom.

“I think when you wake up five years from now, you are going to have more luxury in Cherry Creek and more potential to add luxury, because it starts with the nature of the town,” he said. “As the town continues to grow and become wealthier and as the town becomes more sophisticated in its fashion desire … these fashion stores start to wake up.”