A three-story Urban Outfitters opened to the public on Thursday morning on Walton Street near Armory Square in downtown Syracuse.

 

The trendy clothing store, geared toward young adults, is the first in Onondaga County. The closest Urban Outfitters before Thursday was in Ithaca, about an hour’s drive from Syracuse University. The store is expected to attract students off the hill into downtown, possibly boosting business at nearby establishments.

Although the grand opening — including a Deejay and sales — is slated for Saturday, there was a steady flow of customers Thursday, many of them from the area because most SU undergraduates won’t be back in town for another week.

Kelly McDonald and Abby Sobolevsky, both recent graduates from high school in Skaneateles, said Urban is their favorite clothing store and they made the trip downtown to browse and shop.

‘I go to New York City a lot. And my friends would come with me,’ McDonald said. ‘That’s where I first found it. I feel it represents our style.’

Although the prices are a little high for a student with a small income, McDonald said, browsing the store gives her an idea of the styles she can look for elsewhere. Non-sale items range from $25 to $80 dollars for a shirt or sweater. Jeans are priced around $100.

‘It’s bad for my credit card, but sometimes it’s good to splurge,’ McDonald said. 

The building’s warehouse-brick façade is fitting for the store’s unfinished feel on the inside.

Women’s clothing — a mixture of fall plaids, floral prints and handfuls of different silk dresses — is laid out on the first floor. Men’s is on the second floor and home furnishings, fitting rooms and sale items are on the top floor.

The line for the fitting room was about 20-people deep an hour after the store opened.

The Urban is smaller than ones in major metro areas, like Boston or New York City. The sale section is quaint. But for McKayla Crump, a freshman magazine journalism major, that did not deter her from buying a few back-to-school items.

She and her friend, Liz Heater, both from the Syracuse area, bought several shirts, a romper and earrings.

‘It’s trendy and a little bit indie,’ Heater said.

The girls agreed the store is likely to bring business to the stores nearby. They anticipated eating lunch next door, a place they would have never gone on a Thursday morning had Urban not existed, Sobolevsky said.

‘Restaurants will thrive, we never come down here,’ she said.

The expected flow of young people into downtown for the store’s opening attracted political organizers trying to gather support for Democrats running in November’s mid-term elections. 

‘Most of the young people seem to be very supportive of (President Barack) Obama,’ Angela DeSantis, one of the community organizers, said as she tried to get signatures outside Urban Outfitters. But that morning she had gotten a few rejections, she said.

Although McDonald and Sobolevsky are going away for college they said they expect to make the trip to downtown Syracuse whenever they return home.  

‘I’m so excited,’ McDonald said. ‘This was a great idea.’

bastrum@syr.edu

 

Published on August 18, 2010 at 12:00 pm