March 28, 2024

At Airports, a World of Services for Business Fliers and Workers

Jim Rosenberg, the head of online and social media for the World Bank, can vouch that some airports offer a lot more than places to eat and newsstands filled with gossipy magazines.

On a flight from Washington to Tbilisi, Georgia, Mr. Rosenberg realized during a stop in Munich that he “didn’t have this asthma medicine I take every day,” he said. But, luckily, the airport had a pharmacy. “I knew the generic name to tell them what I needed,” he said. “They told me I had to go to the clinic for a prescription. It was just down the hall.”

Mr. Rosenberg said he was surprised at how easy it was. “The most this all cost me was mainly time and money from being disorganized.”

Even the most efficient business travelers may find themselves forgetting something or running out of time to take care of a personal errand before a flight. Airports, particularly those in Europe and Asia, are responding by offering an increasing array of services like hair salons, medical clinics and dry cleaners.

Rainer Perry, the United States representative for Düsseldorf International Airport, said that “the city is known for trade shows and conventions, so we get a lot of business travelers.” The airport’s advantage, Mr. Perry said, is its small size, with all services “in one terminal building, so no long distances.” He said the services included meeting rooms, pharmacies, a hairdresser, a post office and an airport dentist, open even on Sundays and holidays, allowing travelers to schedule visits or have emergency dental work between connections.

Wilko W. Geesink, a pharmacist, is the managing director of Apotheek Schiphol Plaza, the pharmacy inside Arrivals Hall 3 in Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport, which opened in 2009. Mr. Geesink said his clients included “locals, people working at Schiphol Airport or living nearby, commuters, travelers, hospitals from abroad, oil platforms, you name it.”

Many business travelers are repeat clients who send “prescriptions by e-mail in advance, together with their travel schedule,” he said. “When they pass by, everything is ready to be picked up and paid for.”

Jonathan Massey, a principal with the airport design firm Corgan Associates, says several factors have led to the expansion of airport services. “Functionality was once the leading decision point in design,” he said in an e-mail, “but now the traveler’s ease and experience are among an airport’s key priorities.”

He added that passengers had more time than in the past as “some people try to get to the airport earlier to reduce the stress of the check-in and security procedure, resulting in more time at the gate.” The expanded services also help airport management “to increase revenue generation,” he said.

Foreign airports have led the way in services, Mr. Massey said, starting with duty-free shopping. “Flying between countries in Europe could be compared to flying between the states in the United States,” he said, resulting in a much higher percentage of Europeans traveling internationally and supporting a greater range of services.

“Asian airports,” he added, “have been innovative in providing amenities that cater to long-haul passengers with very long layovers.” He cited services as diverse as short-stay hotels, movie theaters and pay-per-use airline lounges.

“The majority of traffic through airports is your typical personal or business traveler,” he said, but “airport workers and airline employees also make use of terminals.”

That is the case with the SFO Medical Clinic at San Francisco International Airport, which opened in 1972 and is one of only a handful of airport medical clinics in the United States. “We do see a lot of travelers in between flights and employees who work at the airport who walk in when they don’t feel well,” said Neil Sol, the clinic’s director.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/26/business/airport-services-go-beyond-newsstands-and-ready-made-sandwiches.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Preoccupations: When Relocation Is a Way of Life

My wife, Meg, teaches at a Montessori school. She and our teenage daughters, Eleanor and Georgia, will reunite with me at the end of the school year. It’s the seventh move for Meg and me: about every three years for the last two decades, we’ve packed and unpacked, and left newfound schools, friends, cars, dry cleaners, banks and homes, and found newer ones.

If you want to advance in the hotel industry, you’d better be able to check “yes” next to the box that asks, “Willing to relocate?” Mobility must be in your DNA if you want to move up. Originally from Switzerland, I myself have moved eight times over 25 years of working in hotels, rising from hotel restaurant food runner to hotel general manager: from Gstaad to Lausanne, Switzerland; then to Washington, Rome, Paris and back to Washington, then to Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, and to Chicago and Washington once more. Eleanor, now 17, was born in Rome. Georgia, 14, joined the journey on our first assignment in Washington.

Meg knew the score — and welcomed the global lifestyle — when she married me. In fact, she chose a mobile career herself, knowing that there would be Montessori schools worldwide.

The company provides good logistical support when it moves its employees. And on the home front, we have grown increasingly adaptive, and the moves have become easier over the years. The process begins when I first realize that a move may be in the works. Meg and I go out for lunch or coffee and review our trusty to-do list to become move-ready. Then we take our daughters out to lunch or dinner and broach the subject, beginning with “How would you feel if we moved to X?”

The worst reaction was when we planned to move back to Washington from Chicago less than a year after arriving there from Mexico. We thought the girls would be thrilled to reunite with friends in a familiar place. We thought wrong. In unison, they broke out in tears; they had just made new friends and were starting to fit in again.

Meg, so skilled at working with children as a teacher, had them talk about the roots of their fears and sadness, which usually revolve around establishing new social networks. I, racked by guilt about upsetting their cart again, blurted that they could get the puppy they had been begging for. (I had been adamantly opposed until then.) The tears stopped. Needless to say, our pup, Snickers, will be moving to Paris, too.

To stay sane at relocation time, we keep the house we’re in as homey as possible until we move, then turn the new house into a home as fast as we can. That way, we don’t have to stare at cardboard boxes on both ends of the trip. We can pack in two weeks.

Moving makes you prioritize what’s important. You have to decide what’s crucial enough to bring, and what’s marginal enough to leave behind. With friends, you have to choose those to see before you go, and the ones you want to stay in touch with after the move.

Each of us has certain things we take along — our “transitional objects.” For example, I need the big wooden credenza that’s been in my family for generations, a great coffee machine, my A.S. Roma soccer-club shirt and my watch box — after all, I am Swiss. For Meg, it’s not about things, but about creating a cozy, well-lit new space. The girls still bring their favorite stuffed animals along with photos, but their most important transitional object is each other.

BUILDING a new network of friends can be as daunting for Meg and me as it is for the girls. We’ve found friends among new work colleagues and through tight-knit expat communities. But there’s a danger of getting stuck in a cultural bubble and never befriending local people.

Our moves have brought us a great appreciation of cultural differences. The ability to adapt quickly to change helps in all kinds of situations. The moves have also prepared our daughters to make new friends quickly. Still, we wonder and worry how it will affect their future relationships. Will they have trouble forming long-lasting bonds?

We find inspiration, meanwhile, in
the lyrics of “You’re My Home,” the Billy Joel song: “I never had a place that I could call my very own, but that’s
all right, my love, ’cause you’re my home.”

As told to Perry Garfinkel.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/23/jobs/when-relocation-is-a-way-of-life.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

As Condos Fill, Retail Space Remains Vacant

But through all its travails, one thing hasn’t changed about the building: Its vast ground-floor retail space, advertised as having 125 feet of Hudson River frontage, has never been occupied. The commercial broker, Sinvin Real Estate, has been offering potential tenants 18 months’ free rent, but hasn’t leased the space.

A blank storefront on a prominent site may not be easy on the eyes or good for the building’s image. But is it a bad thing for the residents and the condo’s finances in general? The answer is, probably not.

After all, a 99-cent store or a noisy bar could have a negative effect on condominium prices, which is why real estate experts say that the wrong business can be worse for a building than no business at all. Developers are loath to bring in delis, dry cleaners and discount stores; everyone would like a Marc Jacobs boutique or, at the very least, a bank. Many developers have therefore been biding their time, rather than do anything to hurt the value of the residential units over the stores.

Some landlords or developers have the resources to wait out a recession or a downturn. And others have sold the retail spaces as condos to investors, who through carefully structured deals pay relatively low carrying charges.

At River Lofts, as retail space in the building has sat empty, condos upstairs have continued to sell for millions of dollars. The same is true at many other new or recent condo buildings, including high-profile ones like Richard Meier’s 165 Charles Street and Jean Nouvel’s “vision machine” at 100 11th Avenue.

“If the developer has done well upstairs, he can afford to wait as long as he wants downstairs,” said Faith Hope Consolo, who heads the retail leasing and sales division of Prudential Douglas Elliman. “Sometimes we bring them offers,” she said of condo developers, “and we don’t even hear back.”

Ms. Consolo says the retail market, which has been weak for several years, appears to be recovering. There was “as much activity in the first quarter of 2011 as in the second half of 2010,” she said, referring to retail and restaurant leases in Manhattan. But, she said, the effects might not reach the out-of-the-way locations of most of the long-vacant retail spaces — which she described as “orphans.”

Richard Pandiscio, whose company has created the marketing campaigns for a number of expensive condo buildings, said that “from a marketing perspective, a retail tenant that adds an element of convenience or prestige is a positive.” But, he added, “right now, with so many retail spaces empty, I doubt too many residents are bothered by an empty space on their ground floor.”

Mr. Pandiscio himself lives at 100 11th Avenue, the Jean Nouvel building, where early marketing materials showed a glamorous restaurant, on the ground floor. In fact, the space has never been rented.

Another building that has never had a retail tenant — but where condo prices don’t appear to have suffered — is 165 Charles Street, where an apartment sold in February for $7.35 million. In that building, most of the retail frontage is around the corner from the residential entrance, meaning residents don’t have to look at a dusty storefront as they come and go.

But some buildings, like the glass tower at the corner of 110th Street and Malcolm X Boulevard in Harlem, seem seriously diminished by the absence of retail tenants. There, the entire retail frontage facing Central Park is vacant and, with unpainted wallboards behind double-height glass, has a forlorn appearance. (A small deli and a Subway restaurant occupy two much smaller spaces on the east side of the building.) But repeated e-mails and calls to unit owners at the building, known as 111 Central Park North, failed to turn up a single complaint about the vacancies. True, owners are unlikely to speak candidly about buildings in which they have spent as much as $6 million for apartments.

But it is also true that, once they have bought, residents generally have little or no financial stake in whether the retail spaces are ever occupied.

That’s because condo developers tend to retain the retail spaces for themselves, or sell them to investors. Last year, the retail spaces at 40 Mercer Street, a Jean Nouvel-designed building in SoHo, sold for an astounding $41.9 million. At 111 Central Park North, Tom Shapiro, an investor in Manhattan, recently paid $7 million for the retail spaces.

Mr. Shapiro said by e-mail that the businesses he had rented to — the Subway and the deli, as well as a dry cleaner and a medical office that also have street-level access — were doing well, and that other businesses were on their way. He said it was important to find tenants who would enhance the building. “We are big believers in the future of Harlem and acquired the space to hold for the long term,” he wrote.

The situation at River Lofts is similar. According to Christopher Owles, a principal of Sinvin, the retail space in that building is controlled by an investor, not the residents, “so the loss in income isn’t felt by anyone other than the owning party.”

The same is true at One Jackson Square, off 8th Avenue just south of 14th Street. Since the sponsor owns the units, said David Penick, a vice president for development at Hines, one of the developers, the vacancies “have no effect on the finances of the condo.”

As for developers who retain the retail spaces in their buildings, most of them can afford to wait out a slow economy, said Louis V. Greco Jr., a prominent Brooklyn developer. That, Mr. Greco said, is because when the condo deals are structured, “most of the operating costs of the building are attributable to the residential component.” The retail spaces, by contrast, are assigned relatively low carrying charges.

One of Mr. Greco’s projects, the 25-story tower called be@schermerhorn, on Schermerhorn Street in Downtown Brooklyn, has three large retail spaces, just one of which is rented. Mr. Greco said that, because his carrying costs are low and he believes the market “is on an upswing,” he had been sticking close to the asking price of $50 a square foot per year, rather than give the spaces away.

“The vacant retail space has not hurt the residential sales in that we only have one unit of the 246 left to sell,” he said. And while condo owners may not have stores in their building, the first-rate gourmet shop Brooklyn Fare (with its Michelin-starred restaurant) is diagonally across the street.

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=6c91502523bca938cba5201ba9260fe3

One Size Fits Nobody: Seeking a Steady 4 or a 10

It’s a familiar problem for many women, as standard sizing has never been very standard, ever since custom clothing gave way to ready-to-wear.

So, baffled women carry armfuls of the same garment in different sizes into the dressing room. They order several sizes of the same shirt online, just to get the right fit.

Now, a handful of companies are tackling the problem of sizes that are unreliable. Some are pushing more informative labels. Some are designing multiple versions of a garment to fit different body shapes. And one is offering full-body scans at shopping malls, telling a shopper what sizes she should try among the various brands.

“For the consumer to go out and navigate which one do I match with is a huge challenge, and causes frustration and returns,” said Tanya Shaw, an entrepreneur working on a fit system. “So many women tie their self-esteem to the size on the tag.”

As the American population has grown more diverse, sizes have become even less reliable. Over the years, many brands have changed measurements so that a woman who previously wore a 12 can now wear a 10 or an 8, a practice known as “vanity sizing.”

In men’s clothes, the dimensions are usually stated in inches; women’s clothing involves more guesswork.

Take a woman with a 27-inch waist. In Marc Jacobs’s high-end line, she is between an 8 and a 10. At Chico’s, she is a triple 0. And that does not consider whether the garment fits in the hips and bust. (Let’s not get into length; there is a reason most neighborhood dry cleaners also offer tailoring.)

Ms. Shaw, the entrepreneur, is chief executive of a company called MyBestFit that addresses the problem. It is setting up kiosks in malls to offer a free 20-second full-body scan — a lot like the airport, minus the pat-down alternative that T.S.A. agents offer.

Lauren VanBrackle, 20, a student in Philadelphia, tried MyBestFit when she was shopping last weekend.

“I can be anywhere from a 0 at Ann Taylor to a 6 at American Eagle,” she said. “It obviously makes it difficult to shop.” This time, the scanner suggested that at American Eagle, she should try a 4 in one style and a 6 in another. Ms. VanBrackle said she tried the jeans on and was impressed: “That machine, in a 30-second scan, it tells you what to do.”

The customer steps into a circular booth, fully dressed. A wand rotates around her, emitting low-power radio waves that record about 200,000 body measurements, figuring out things like thigh circumference.

Next, the system matches the customer’s measurements to clothes in its database. MyBestFit currently measures clothes from about 50 stores, including Old Navy, Eddie Bauer and Talbots.

Customers then receive a printout of the sizes at each store that ought to fit the customer best. The retailers pay a fee when they appear in the results, but they cannot pay to be included in the results; the rankings are based solely on fit. (The company saves the data, with ID numbers but not names, and may give aggregate information to retailers as feedback.)

Don Thomas, who manages the Eddie Bauer store at the King of Prussia Mall outside Philadelphia, said the system was helpful to shoppers. “Nine times out of 10, if left on their own, they will choose the wrong size pant,” he said. With a printout, “if it says they’re a 4 or a 6, they’re a 4 or a 6, generally. So it’s really good for the customer who’s time-starved, which we all are.”

Ms. Shaw says there are plans for 13 more scanning machines in malls along the East Coast and in California by the end of the year.

The sizing variations are a big contributor to $194 billion in clothing purchases returned in 2010, or more than 8 percent of all clothing purchases, according to the National Retail Federation.

The scanners are a modern solution to an old problem. Studying dress sizes in Vogue advertisements from 1922 on, Alaina Zulli, a designer focusing on costume history, found clothing sizes have been irregular for decades.

A woman with a 32-inch bust would have worn a Size 14 in Sears’s 1937 catalog. By 1967, she would have worn an 8, Ms. Zulli found.

Today, she would wear a zero.

Plenty of people have tried to address these arbitrary sizes. Advocating a labeling system called Fitlogic over the last few years, an entrepreneur, Cricket Lee, discovered just how difficult it is to change manufacturers’ approach to size.

Her labeling system divides women’s bodies into three shapes, straight, hourglass or bottom-heavy, and a Fitlogic label carries both the standard size and the shape.

Ms. Lee did tests in the mid-2000s with manufacturers like Jones Apparel and retailers like Nordstrom. But retailers said consumers had trouble grasping the concept. “The manufacturers were so afraid of producing more than one fit in the very beginning,” she said.

Still, she said, she will soon try to sell the sizing system again.

Some brands are taking their own approaches to make the fitting room less demoralizing. Mary Alderete, vice president for women’s global marketing at Levi’s, said, “When we try on 10 pairs of jeans to buy one, the reason you feel bad is because you think something’s wrong with you.”

Last fall, the company introduced Curve ID, a line that offers three styles, depending on how rounded a woman’s backside is — slight, demi and bold. (Levi’s is now testing a fourth style, called supreme curve.) Each of the three styles includes about 29 fits and colors, and dozens of sizes. Ms. Alderete said the company had sold more than one million pairs of the Curve jeans.

Marie-Eve Faust, the program director of fashion merchandising at Philadelphia University, called the Levi’s effort “a good start.”

“The next step is to have the major players sit together, manufacturers, retailers, brands, and say ‘This type of label should be appropriate for all of us. Let’s standardize,’ ” she said.

Dr. Faust said she had been discussing a new kind of label that takes into account the wearer’s shape, but expected retailers to bristle.

Still, Dr. Faust said, change is needed.

“It would be nice just to take the pant, look at the label and say, ‘That should fit me,’ ” she said.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/25/business/25sizing.html?partner=rss&emc=rss