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Louis Vuitton on East 57th Street will be adding more space to its flagship, by snatching up the adjacent building on 743 Fifth Avenue and looping it into its already 20,000-square-foot flagship. WWD reports that the project could include some heavy renovations, since the floors and ceilings in both buildings don't actually line up. A source explains: "The floors are not aligned. The [743 Fifth Avenue] building has much lower ceiling heights than the flagship. In the flagship, Louis Vuitton took out some floors to raise the ceiling heights. Aligning the floors is where some of the capital expenditure is going to be made."
So it's going to cost them big bucks (WWD doesn't know how much, but they remind us that the 57th Street store, purchased in 2007, cost LVMH a cool $60 million), so the project won't begin for at least another year. But it turns out that this was all a part of the plan from the beginning, as the source adds, "When they bought it, they said they're going to expand." The building on Fifth Avenue is also next to the Bergdorf men's store, and used to house luxury jewelry company Gilan, the "Cartier of Turkey," on its ground floor.
· Louis Vuitton Eyes Fifth Avenue Expansion [WWD, subscription req'd]