Tearful loyal customers and sales assistants milled around amid half-empty shelves on the last working day of Kyiv’s Central Department Store, or TsUM, before it closed for more than two years of reconstruction, starting Feb. 1.
The decision to upgrade the 73-year-old Soviet style store into a modern shopping mall came from its new owner, ESTA Holding, which is a part of the System Capital Management group, owned by Ukraine’s richest man and lawmaker, Rinat Akhmetov.
On the Jan. 31 eve of its closure, Kyivans came to their favorite department store to say goodbye to TsUM, which has dominated the central street throughout the lives of Kyivans. The acronym stands for Центральний Універсальний Магазин – literally translated as Central Universal Store, but more accurately Central Department Store.
Halyna Ivanova came on the last day of business to say goodbye. “I almost grew up here, if one can say so. I spent my free time here with my friends,” the 60-year-old woman said. “Almost all my clothes were bought here. I am so upset that it is being closed.”
On its last working day on Jan. 31, Kyiv’s TsUM greeted visitors with empty shelves and final sales. (Kostyantyn Chernichkin)
Lidiya Kapula, also 60, came to TsUM to buy a warm waistcoat. She went her usual way – straight to the fourth floor, where women’s clothes have been sold for many years, only to find out that this is probably going to be her last purchase in the store.
“I remember when I was 14 my parents and I came here and they bought me my first expensive outfit. I remember everything. It was a beige spring coat,” she recalls nostalgically on her way to the cash desk.
It should not be a major problem for clients to find a new place to shop as new labels and department stores are sprouting around Kyiv. But the store’s dozens of salespeople, many of whom have worked here for years and even decades, might not be so lucky.
“I have worked in TsUM for 35 years,” said Iryna, 51, too publicity-shy to give her surname. She is worried that she will find it tough to find another job, as employers shy away from people close to retirement age.
“Who will need me now? Employers do not pay attention to your experience now, they look at your age and whether you have long legs,” she said with tears in her eyes. She said hundreds of sales people in TsUM have not been offered alternative employment.
Maksym Gromadtsov, ESTA’s investment director, said that for years TsUM has had no sales staff, just administrative and technical workers.
“TsUM salespeople as such have not existed for a long time. … Those who call themselves ‘TsUM salespeople’ had worked for many years in the Soviet TsUM, and were then employed in the same capacity by independent tenants,” Gromadtsov said.
Kyiv’s TsUM has been closed several times over its history, said Mykhaylo Kalnytsky, a local historian and blogger. After its opening in 1939, the building suffered from fire during World War II but its walls survived.
Between 1958 and 1960, the department store was upgraded and the part running along Khreshchatyk Street became twice as long. The next renovation in 1985 made room for departments with Western-style self service, as opposed to Soviet-style service over the counter.
“It used to be the central store in the city, that’s it,” summarizes Kalnytsky. “Even in the 1980s, a time of huge deficit in the Soviet Union, there were more goods on TsUM’s shelves than in other stores. Here you could even buy scarce goods imported from Eastern Europe. Its windows looked just marvelous.”
In this 1941 photo, the TsUM – or Central Department Store – dominates the landscape on the main Kreshchatyk Street. Soon, many of the buildings near it would be destroyed during World War II. After 73 years, the store closed on Jan. 31 for remodeling, ending yet another feature of Soviet life.
(mik-kiev.livejournal.com)
Lately, Kyiv’s TsUM had reasonably friendly staff and many Ukrainian producers. It also had a layout that had not changed for years, which means that regular customers knew exactly where to find the right type of product and the right size.
Lights, pottery and jewelry lived on the first floor, shoes were on the second floor (including rare small sizes), men’s clothes and suits on the third, women’s clothes on the fourth, and the top floor housed home goods.
At the same time, it has been painfully clear lately that TsUM was having trouble keeping up with modern shopping habits and competing against glitzy shopping malls like Globus and Dream Town.
Last March the department store was acquired by Akhmetov’s ESTA Holding, which also owns part of Leonardo business center and the Opera Hotel in Kyiv, as well as Donbass Palace in Donetsk, among other real estate holdings.
The new TsUM owner plans to build more shopping spaces in the yard, but promises that the facade and name will remain intact.
“ESTA Holdings aims to return TsUM its title of the main department store of the country,” Gromadtsov said.
Apart from a variety of boutiques, the new TsUM will house a supermarket, several restaurants and cafes. A renowned English architectural bureau, Benoy, was invited to create the interior. The new corporate style of TsUM is being designed by an international branding agency, Landor.
The new department store is scheduled to open its doors in autumn 2014, and will become a powerful sign that the era of Soviet-style shopping centers is gone.
Kyiv Post staff writer Oksana Faryna can be reached at [email protected].
Staff writer Olga Rudenko contributed to this story.
