Daily News from New York, New York • 10

10 Sunday, March 10, 2019 DAILY NEWS NYDailyNews.com Hudson Yards' big bet on luxury both in physical space as well as on the internet, said Webber Hudson, a Related vice president who oversees all retail leasing for the global real estate giant. Hudson said he is not losing sleep over whether Neiman or the mall's other tenants will succeed "as long as Neiman and, for that matter, all my merchants at Hudson Yards continue to innovate." The Shops at Hudson Yards will open 90 occupied, Hudson said. The complex has about 720,000 square feet that is leasable, and about 190,000 of that is Neiman, according to Related. Neiman has problems besides online rivals, said Mark Cohen, director of retail studies at Columbia Business School. They include competition for the upscale luxury market from Bloomingdales, Saks Fifth Avenue, Barney's, BY DAVID M.

LEVITT NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Hudson Yards is getting its first big retail draw Friday when Neiman Marcus group opens its inaugural Manhattan store. The famed Dallas-based retailer tries to offer customers a luxe "experience" unavailable on e-commerce platforms. It will feature entertainment like billiards and skee-ball, a stage for fashion shows, a sit-down restaurant, a bar and a demonstration ldtchen. It's all about connecting with customers, said Theresa Palmer, the company's senior VP for brands. "Luxury is all about emotion," Palmer said.

But at a time when retail is dominated by Amazon and other online sellers, it's an open question whether brick-and-mortar stores can survive. In the time it's taken to build the million-square-foot say it's hard to learn on an empty stomach and students in the situation agree. At Clara Barton High School in Brooklyn, students eat lunch in five 46-minute shifts that start as early at 8:50 a.m. and go as late at 1:56 p.m. Clara Barton students said they'd laugh about the wacky lunchtimes at the school if they could but their stomachs are too empty to find much of anything funny.

"It's not lunch. It's like breakfast," said freshman Jervana Gordon, 15, who has one of the early lunch periods. "They still serve lunch food, but it's like breakfast time," she explained. Sophomore Chelsea Fevriere, 15, said she had one of the early lunchtimes in her freshman year, and she sur vived by bringing snacks to class. The experience sometimes made Fevriere miserable, but she learned to deal with it.

"I bring my own food so I will have it later on," she said. Students who don't bring their own nosh are out of luck, said freshman Kamyrah Crosby, 15, who also has one of the early lunch periods. "Unless you bring your own food, you just have to wait until after school," Crosby lamented. Education officials said the 1,221 ldds enrolled at Clara Barton are eating lunch at odd times because the school employs a multi-session scheduling program, meaning a portion of their students start class as early as 7:15 am. The arrangement is fairly common in the public school Bergdorf Goodman which is owned by Neiman and soon Nordstrom.

AH those stores have flagships in in the heart of Mid-town, rather than west of the traditional business district in an area served by a single subway line, the No. 7 train. Neiman's store is also on the fifth, sixth and seventh floors of a seven-level complex. Historically, stores that are higher than street-level have had a hard time attracting customers in New York, Cohen said. On the contrary, Hudson said, customers will celebrate the "verticality" of the mall.

He said he has been involved in some of the nation's most famous and successful vertical urban malls, including Water Tower Place in Chicago and Copley Place in Boston. retail complex on 10th Ave. (above), the traditional business model for malls has died. In the decade when the Hudson Yards deal was inked, anchoring a mall with a department store like Neiman was a sure bet. Now department stores are among the softest targets for e-commerce, and mall landlords around the country are scrambling to find new uses for vacated outlets.

But Neiman and Related which is developing The Shops at Hudson Yards, believe the store is poised to succeed. Neiman last year brought in Geoffroy van Raemdonck to be its chief executive. As group president for Europe, the Middle East and Africa for Ralph Lauren he oversaw that company's transformation into a brand that lives BY MIKEY LIGHT AND BEN CHAPMAN NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Lunch it's what's for breakfast! Thousands of city students are forced to eat lunch at ridiculous hours some as early as 8:50 a.m. because of a shortage of cafeteria space and questionable decision-making by principals, the Daily News has learned. A stunning 908 city schools start serving lunch before 11 am.

according to an analysis of Education Department records obtained by The News. That's according to data reported by roughly 55 of 1,638 public schools. Teachers and researchers.