Bloomingdale’s presents its design for SoNo Collection store

NORWALK, Conn. – It’s been a challenge to design the Bloomingdale’s façade but the result is a unique, quiet subtle elegance, an architect told the Norwalk Zoning Commission on Thursday.

Kevin Kennon of Kevin Kennon Architects spoke of a series of 4-foot square metal panels along the western and southern façade, creating an “interplay of silver and white” and offering a shimmering glow at night with the use of LED lights of varying size.

General Growth Partners (GGP) was in front of Zoning’s Plan Review Committee seeking a modification of its plan for The SoNo Collection, the mall planned for the corner of North Water Street and West Avenue, and a classification for that modification as a “minor change.” This would mean that the approval of the Bloomingdale’s façade would be done without a public hearing.

The challenge?

The SoNo Collection’s Bloomingdale’s is designed to be set back from West Avenue so that it doesn’t obscure the historic Macedonia Church next door; it’s also planned to be below a hotel, which hasn’t been definitively designed yet as there hasn’t been a deal made with a hotel company yet.

Not only that, but the entrance for the hotel is planned to be on the corner at street level, while shoppers will enter Bloomingdale’s through the mall’s interior and through a second level shopping garage.

“Our challenge was to design what is essentially the box below the hotel, and to do that in such a way that it has a strong design element on its own, without screaming ‘Here’s Bloomingdale’s,’ but quietly asserting its presence in the overall design, anchoring the south side of the development as it hooks into the South Norwalk business district,” Kennon said.

The resultant innovation – yes, this is a first – uses Bloomingdale’s usual signature pallet of colors; black, white and a warm gray silver, almost like a luxury automobile, Kennon said.

There will be two levels of metal panels, with white panels behind silver panels. The metal panels will be cut to create circles at their corners, which will be 4-inches wide on the northern end but will gradually get bigger, with a 1-foot 8-inch width at the southern end, he said.

The spaces between the square metal panels will also increase, he said.

“In effect, the metal panels open up as you come to the corner. That happens on both the west façade and the south façade,” Kennon said.

A “very subtle” LED light will be behind each panel, each with a translucent glass dome around it, to diffuse the light, he said.

This “very elaborate design” will result in twinkling lights at night, which passersby will interpret as appearing and disappearing, and an interesting interplay between the white and silver during the day, he said.

The LED lights will be one watt each, Kennon said, in response to a question from the Commission.

“We are not talking about Atlantic City here. We are really talking about something quite subtle and elegant,” Kennon said.

It’s “more of a shimmer,” (GGP) Senior Designer Paul Madden said.

Steve Cecil of the Cecil Group, the Redevelopment Agency’s consultant on the project, has signed off on the design, Madden said.

The lights would not be on in the daytime, and would be shut off one hour after closing, developers said.

Commissioners indicated a willingness to call the Bloomingdale’s façade a minor change. Also under consideration as a “minor change” is the Bloomingdale’s sign.

Commissioners also asked when GGP would have a hotel operator lined up.

“We are working with hotel developers,” GGP Senior Developer Doug Adams said, pointing out that the rendering on display has an updated look for the hotel, which he said reflects the ongoing discussions.

The Land Disposition Agreement (LDA) with Norwalk allows GGP 20 months to name a hotel but the company expects “to be much sooner than that,” Adams said, adding, “We are still hard at work trying to get the economics and partnership together.”