WTF is Going on With Michael Kors’s Rittenhouse Location?

Coming to Rittenhouse …. eventually. | Goran Bogicevic / Shutterstock.com

A brief timeline of Michael Kors in Philadelphia:

JANUARY 2014: Burberry vacates is prime (but apparently not prosperous) location at 1705 Walnut Street. No one is too surprised or upset because it wasn’t that great of an outpost anyway. Racked Philly confirms that Michael Kors is taking over the space.

FEBRUARY 2014: Philadelphia Business Journal reports that Pearl Properties of Philadelphia bought the building for $5 million, and that the Michael Kors store is expected to open May 15th.

APRIL 2014: Michael Kors — the man, not the store — comes to Philly. He visits Art In The Age, Joan Shepp and Knit Wit, shakes lots of hands, wears aviators, sees Cher. The store must be following soon, we thought!

MAY 2014: Crickets.

Fast-forward to now, and this is what we have:

The exterior of 1705 Walnut Street.

Hm.

We started to get concerned. After all, there were those rumblings about investors worrying that the Michael Kors bubble would soon burst. And this storefront—still empty six months later—was looking to be a bleak sign.

We reached out to MSC, the firm who handled the Kors deal. A rep said they weren’t sure when it was slated to open, but that spring was never really on the table. We were even more confused.

On to the the Kors team. A public relations coordinator for Michael Kors dodged any specific dates (or any specifics at all) with a pat “we cannot comment at this time.” Red flags went up. Were we ever going to get this mythical Michael Kors store?

Finally we got an email from a member of the Kors team with actual, (semi-)concrete news (a-ha!): The Walnut Street store is scheduled to open on November 13th “as of now, but things are still subject to change.” Sigh.

So, for those of you anxious to get your MK-logo-ed goods, mid-November it is. (For now.)