In another example of retrofit to manage the new retail reality, Ginia Bellafante wrote that WeWork is paying $850 million for Lord & Taylor’s 676,000SF Italianate building in Midtown NY, which it has occupied since 1914.

“…it stood not merely as a monument to turn-of-the-century commerce but also as the grand testament to what the sociologist Thorstein Veblen called the rising culture of “conspicuous leisure.” Leisure, Veblen wrote, “does not connote indolence or quiescence.’’ What it conveys is the “nonproductive consumption of time… any time spent away from the activity of labor.”

“Lord & Taylor will rent a quarter of the building, maintaining a smaller version of itself. WeWork will take over the rest for its headquarters and the leasing of shared office space — and tutorials perhaps for what is supposed to count now as a good time.”

WeWork looks to, “build an entire social life around the WeWork experience.”