Should we mourn the fact that this will be the last Christmas season with Filene's as a Boston landmark? I think so, and I was surprised at the lack of outcry when the giant retailing conglomerate, Federated Department Stores, announced last summer that it would close the flagship store and retire the Filene's name as part of an $11 billion deal to acquire Filene's owner, the May Company.
Federated is not just ending the proud legacy of Filene's but also Chicago's equally storied Marshall Field, and Pittsburgh's Kaufmann's. All of these, as we have been told, will become (ho-hum) more Macy's.
In one sense, this is no big thing. Retailers come and retailers pass away. When family businesses lack a suitable heir, or cease to be competitive, or just want to cash in, they typically sell out to a big chain. The chain, in turn, is free to do as it wishes. This has been going on for centuries. A famous New Yorker cover depicted a ghostly Manhattan scene with all the great retailers who have passed on, from Altman's to Wanamaker's. New emporia arise to take their places. So the consumer who romanticizes a particular brand name is a bit of a sucker. It's all commerce.
On the other hand, Filene's is in a special category. It is a Boston landmark, along with the Red Sox (also a commercial enterprise), the Symphony, Faneuil Hall, the brick cityscape, and the other unique institutions that make our town Boston and distinguish it from a hundred other cities. At least the people who bought the Sox had the wit not auction off naming rights to Fenway Park.
The folding of Filene's into Macy's is part of a homogenizing trend in which our country is becoming the United States of Generica. Suburban shopping malls are already gone: few have unique local businesses, all have essentially the same national chains, and it's hard to tell one from another. In south Florida, which takes this cookie-cutter trend to an extreme, it's hard even to find a locally owned restaurant.
Downtown malls are moving in the same direction, except that they are more upscale. Increasingly, it is hard to tell malls like Copley Place or Prudential from airport duty-free shops.
But to the extent that downtowns are what give cities like ours their special character, it seems almost a crime to turn them into indistinguishable generics. The process takes away what makes a city feel special to the locals, and also makes it less attractive as a destination for visitors. (What is left of the unique feel of a city can always be Disneyfied, completing the corporate process).
You cannot will unique, locally owned businesses into being, of course, but you can create a climate that is friendly or hostile to them. Outer Cape Cod, for instance, goes to great lengths to keep franchises out of its small towns, so that local businesses thrive and the place retains its unique character.
So, what is the matter with the people who run Federated for not appreciating that they are acquiring something special? Even in crass commercial terms, places like Marshall Field and Filene's have what retailers call ''brand equity." Beyond the usual factors of price, quality, and service, ordinary people have fond associations with the place, which draws them into the store.
The answer is that the bean-counters who make these decisions calculate that they make more money by folding the Filene's name than keeping it. It's cheaper to promote one national brand (Macy's) than several. There is not only the flagship Boston store to think about, but all the malls that have both a Filene's and a Macy's. By killing off Filene's, Macy's becomes the only department store at South Shore Plaza in Braintree or Westgate Mall in Brockton, you reduce competition, and gain the power to raise prices.
In a sense, Filene's was doomed once the May Company bought the store in 1988, spun off the famous discount basement into a separate company, and treated it as just another property. Increasingly, department stores like Filene's, Macy's and the rest have already become interchangeable, with essentially the same merchandise, offset by a rather pathetic effort to meet the shopper's desire for something special by turning the story into a series of mini-boutiques.
Still, Filene's is a part of the city's soul. You wouldn't expect a big conglomerate to appreciate that, but you would expect the locals to raise more of a fuss.
Robert Kuttner is co-editor of The American Prospect. This column originally appeared in The Boston Globe.
