If you have walked the south end of Plaza Frontenac in the last few weeks, you have felt it before you saw it. The Saks Fifth Avenue wing is quieter than it should be in early July, the perfume counters have been pared back, and the corridor lights hit the polished floors without the usual competing glow from inside the anchor. The store that has been at the plaza since it opened in 1974 is finishing its last chapter, and the plaza around it is not the same one it was in January.
For residents of Frontenac, Ladue, and the eastern edge of Town and Country, this is not a distant retail story. It is the mall you stop at on the way home from Ladue Middle, the one you cut through to reach Fleming's, the one you have been telling out-of-town guests about for twenty years. The turnover inside it this year is unusually dense, and the shape of what is arriving tells you something specific about where the plaza is headed.
What actually turned over
Saks Global filed a WARN notice with the state of Missouri on March 6, 2026, laying off 65 employees at the Plaza Frontenac store between May 6 and May 31 as part of a broader restructuring that also included two other Neiman Marcus locations nationally. The Frontenac store was the only Saks Fifth Avenue in Missouri, and the next closest one is in Chicago. That matters for the plaza's identity. Since 1974 it has been one of a small number of enclosed U.S. malls anchored by both Saks and Neiman Marcus at once. As of this summer, it is not.
While the south anchor was winding down, the first floor was picking up. Aritzia, the Vancouver-based women's boutique chain with more than 140 stores in North America, opened its first Missouri location at Plaza Frontenac on June 4, 2026, taking roughly 10,000 square feet on the first floor. The nearest Aritzia before that was in Leawood, Kansas, about twenty miles south of Kansas City, which is a useful gauge of how far the plaza still pulls from.
The plaza's second floor turned over earlier. Landmark Theatres, which ran the six-screen cinema tucked in near the Saks side, closed in February 2025 after Brookfield Properties, the plaza's owner, sued it for back rent. That closing quietly ended the cinema's long run as a regular venue for the St. Louis International Film Festival. Brookfield split the former theater footprint between Talbots, which relocated up from the first floor, and Abercrombie & Fitch, which now operates on the second floor near the Saks entrance as its sole St. Louis-area store.
And Anthropologie, which reads as an older move by now, was actually part of the same rotation. It closed at the Saint Louis Galleria on February 9, 2025 and reopened at Plaza Frontenac on March 5, 2025 at 295 Plaza Frontenac on the first floor, making the plaza the region's only Anthropologie.
Put in one place, the churn looks like this:
| Storefront | What changed | When |
|---|---|---|
| Anthropologie | Moved in from Saint Louis Galleria | March 5, 2025 |
| Landmark Plaza Frontenac Cinema | Closed after landlord lawsuit | February 2025 |
| Talbots | Relocated from first floor to former cinema space | Late 2025 |
| Abercrombie & Fitch | Opened in former cinema space, second floor | Fall 2025 |
| Saks Fifth Avenue | Closing permanently, layoffs May 6–31 | May 2026 |
| Aritzia | Opened first-floor storefront, first Missouri store | June 4, 2026 |
Six storefronts in roughly fifteen months, in a plaza that historically prided itself on the stability of its tenant list. That is the story.
The evening rhythm has shifted too
The Landmark closure is the piece that has changed the plaza's after-dark texture the most, and the one residents mention first. The six-screen cinema was the reason the plaza had a Tuesday-night crowd. It was where you saw the smaller foreign titles and the November festival slate, and where you routed a dinner-and-a-movie evening that started at BrickTop's or BRIO and ended at 9:45 on the second floor. With Abercrombie & Fitch and Talbots now in that footprint, the plaza's second floor after 7 p.m. reads more like a retail concourse in wind-down mode than a destination.
The dining out-parcels have not moved. Fleming's Prime Steakhouse, BrickTop's, BRIO Tuscan Grille, and Flower Child are all still there, and Mariposa and the Zodiac Room inside Neiman Marcus continue to run their lunch service. For a summer weeknight, the working pattern most residents have settled into is dinner at one of the out-parcels, a short loop through the first floor, and out. The old rhythm of ending an evening inside the plaza has been rerouted, at least until whatever comes next on the second floor takes shape.
What the new tenant mix tells you
The most interesting thing about the 2026 lineup is what it is not. There is no second luxury anchor waiting in the wings. Brookfield has not announced a replacement for the Saks footprint, and the incoming names are accessible-luxury and lifestyle rather than full-line luxury: Aritzia, Abercrombie & Fitch, Talbots on a bigger floor plate, Anthropologie already installed. Golden Goose, Alo Yoga, Vuori, Lululemon, Kendra Scott, and Tecovas fill in around them. The full-luxury names that have long defined the plaza's identity, Louis Vuitton, Gucci, Tiffany & Co., David Yurman, and Tory Burch, remain, and Neiman Marcus continues as the sole department-store anchor.
That composition, one department-store anchor with a specialty retailer perimeter, is the shape most successful enclosed centers in the country have moved toward over the last decade. Plaza Frontenac has resisted it for years because it could. The fact that the plaza is now leaning into it is less a decline than a category change. For residents, the practical effect is that the reasons to visit are shifting from "browse two anchors" to "target a specific store and a specific meal." The plaza rewards a planned trip more than a leisurely one now.
There is one more piece worth watching. On the online forums that follow St. Louis retail, the recurring rumor since March has been that the Saks land and building were owned by Saks itself rather than leased from Brookfield, which is unusual for a mall anchor and gives Brookfield less direct control over what fills the space. Whether that ends up as a full department-store replacement, a subdivided multi-tenant redevelopment, or something more ambitious across South Lindbergh is the question that will shape the plaza's next five years. Nothing has been announced.
The through-line for someone who lives here
If you have owned a home in the 63131 or 63124 zip codes for any length of time, the plaza has been a fixed point. Directions get given from it. Country club runs pass it. The Christmas windows at Neiman Marcus are on the December calendar without anyone having to mark it down. Losing Saks does not undo any of that. It does, however, mark the first time since 1974 that the plaza will operate with a single department-store anchor, and the tenants that have arrived to compensate are pointed at a different shopper than the one Saks was built for.
For a Tuesday visit this summer, the useful map is short. First floor for Aritzia, Anthropologie, Louis Vuitton, Gucci, Tiffany, and David Yurman. Second floor for Abercrombie & Fitch, the relocated Talbots, and Lululemon. Neiman Marcus for the anchor experience while the Saks side is decommissioned. Out-parcels for dinner. The Landmark seats are gone, and the plaza's evening identity is still finding its new default.
None of this changes what the plaza has always done well, which is give the neighborhoods around it a walkable, climate-controlled second living room. It does change what you are walking into. If you have not been in since spring, the south wing is worth a look before whatever comes next is announced. The version of the plaza that has stood since 1974 is closing a chapter in real time, and the storefronts that opened in the last twelve months are already writing the next one.
If you are thinking about how a shifting retail anchor affects the long-run positioning of a home in Frontenac, Ladue, or the streets that feed Clayton Road west of Lindbergh, that is the kind of question worth a conversation rather than a search bar. Will Springer Homes works with sellers and buyers across these zip codes and is glad to walk through what the current cycle means for a specific address. Schedule a consultation with Will when the timing is right.
