The Shops at Hudson Yards, a mall built over rail yards in Manhattan, New York, opened in 2019 with Neiman Marcus across its top three floors. The department store's lease was planned to run 50 years.
Neiman Marcus closed the store in the summer of 2020, about 16 months after it opened. The mall below was shut at the time under the city's pandemic rules, and the store's floors were left empty.
Those floors are Wells Fargo offices now, together with other space on the upper levels of the building. Wells Fargo officially opened its new home there by October 2026.
The mall keeps the lower levels, where its stores and restaurants are open. It is also a sheltered way through Hudson Yards, leading on toward the No. 7 subway and the High Line.
A seven-level plan with an anchor on top
On September 4, 2014, Related Companies, Oxford Properties Group, and Neiman Marcus announced that the retailer would open its first New York City store at Hudson Yards, the development going up over the rail yards on Manhattan's West Side.
The store was planned at 250,000 square feet on several levels, with an opening set for 2018.
The shopping building meant to hold it had grown on paper.
When full construction started in December 2012 with the first office tower, 10 Hudson Yards, the retail plan called for about 750,000 square feet over five floors.
By 2014, Related and Oxford were describing a 1 million-square-foot complex on seven levels, with the top three reserved for an anchor.
Neiman Marcus was the first major retailer to commit to the building publicly, and the plans gave its store an entrance of its own on Tenth Avenue.
Its place at the top was deliberate: the store was meant to pull shoppers up through every level beneath it, and the plan counted on a network of escalators to carry them there.
Neiman Marcus on Levels 5 through 7
The Shops at Hudson Yards opened at noon on March 15, 2019, as the retail and dining center at 20 Hudson Yards in Manhattan, New York, set over active Long Island Rail Road storage tracks between the office towers at 10 and 30 Hudson Yards, with direct connections into both.
Its lower floors remain a shopping center, and much of its upper section has since been converted to offices.
More than 100 stores and restaurants were planned for the opening.
Neiman Marcus, announced for 2018, opened with the mall across Levels 5, 6, and 7 at about 190,000 square feet, smaller than the 250,000 first announced.
At that size, the one store held more than a quarter of the mall's leasable space.
Luxury brands filled Level 1, and fashion chains took much of Levels 2 through 4.
Shoppers rode up past them through an atrium about 85 feet high, open toward the department-store levels.
Inside, Neiman Marcus had Chanel and Louis Vuitton shops and a place to eat or drink on each of its three levels: Cook & Merchants on Level 5, Bar Stanley on 6, and the Zodiac Room on 7.
Restaurants outside the store gave visitors more reasons to keep climbing.
Queensyard opened on Level 4 and Momofuku's Kawi and Peach Mart on Level 5, while TAK Room and Estiatorio Milos spread across Levels 5 and 6, where Milos looked west over the public plaza.
16 months of a 50-year lease
In the first months of the COVID-19 pandemic, New York City's indoor retail restrictions closed the mall to normal shopping, and its restaurants lost regular indoor service.
Neiman Marcus filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in May 2020.
By June, Related and Oxford were already marketing its three floors, together with other upper-level retail space, to office users.
In July, Neiman Marcus announced that its Hudson Yards store would close, and it shut that summer, about 16 months into a lease planned to run 50 years.
The closing affected about 257 employees.
The store's floors stood empty, along with a wider upper area whose leasing had been planned around the anchor.
TAK Room closed for good in August.
When the mall reopened in September, it did so with masks, hand-sanitizer stations, fewer riders per elevator, and spacing rules on the escalators.
Those escalators still rose to Levels 5 through 7, where no department store was trading.
The upper floors go to Wells Fargo
Related and Oxford kept the empty upper-level space on the office market while the floors below went on as a shopping center.
Momofuku closed Kawi and Peach Mart in 2021, and Kawi's Level 5 space became part of a reworking of the upper levels for office use.
In September 2023, Wells Fargo agreed to buy roughly 400,000 square feet of the building for about $550 million and turn it into offices the bank would own and use itself.
The department store's floors made up about 190,000 of those square feet, and the rest came from other upper-level areas.
Related and Oxford kept the retail below.
Work was visibly under way by March 2024. Changing retail into office space also changed the Tenth Avenue face of the building.
Its perforated-steel skin had served as the rail yards' main ventilation surface.
During the conversion, crews replaced much of that skin with full-height glazing and dark framing, while the ventilation requirement remained.
Wells Fargo's plans added a separate Tenth Avenue entrance and large exterior signs. The recladding was well advanced by February 2025.
Offices above the atrium
The mall's lower floors refilled with new tenants after 2020, and two restaurants from the opening, Estiatorio Milos and Queensyard, are open in 2026.
The building is also a sheltered indoor route through the Hudson Yards complex, with links toward the No. 7 subway and the High Line.
Wells Fargo planned the converted floors for about 2,300 employees moving from 150 East 42nd Street.
The bank already had staff in 30 Hudson Yards, the tower next door, and the new floors would join it in a larger corporate campus.
The move was set to begin in late 2026.
Inside, the atrium's upper edge, where the department store had once opened onto the mall, was closed in behind glass during the conversion.
The building had been stacked seven levels high so shoppers would ride up to that edge.
Wells Fargo's offices are on one side of the glass now, and the shoppers are on the other.
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