Toronto Firm Chosen to Renovate Tiffany Flagship Store - NYTimes.com

The second floor will close in April and reopen in September, selling engagement rings and one-of-a-kind jewelry. The ceiling will have a coffered grid pattern echoing that of the main floor. The side columns will be clad in wood, perhaps a lustrous African hardwood called sapele, and the center columns in mirrors.

The fifth and sixth floors will also be open to the public for the first time; the fifth for entertaining and the display of artifacts from the Tiffany archives, the sixth for customer service, now on the mezzanine.

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The project, to be completed in 2004, will cost $71 million, including the construction of new space at 600 Madison Avenue and the Jackson Heights building.

''The level of details will give it longevity, not the big splashy statement,'' said Glenn Pushelberg, the managing partner of the interiors firm. George Yabu is the creative director.

Largely by moving its executive offices off the fifth floor to 600 Madison Avenue, at 58th Street, and moving the fourth floor operations to Jackson Heights, Queens, the store's selling space will expand to 40,500 square feet from 32,500 square feet, said Beth Owen Canavan, the executive vice president.

But it is Yabu Pushelberg, a Toronto interiors firm, that may have the greatest effect on how Tiffany presents itself for the next generation. It has been chosen to renovate the flagship store at Fifth Avenue and 57th Street, where the company does 12 percent of its worldwide business.

There will be no notable changes to the main floor or the understated exterior except for the reconfiguring of the Fifth Avenue entrance to permit access by customers with baby strollers or in wheelchairs. They must now enter through the side.

''We will not touch the arch,'' said Philip M. Bottega, vice president for real estate services, referring to the colossal pink marble entryway over which the figure of Atlas shoulders the Tiffany clock.

Tiffany moved into its 57th Street store, designed by Cross & Cross, on the eve of World War II. And it announced the addition of three floors when New York was still reeling from the fiscal crisis of the mid-70's. So the current bear market will not change the company's plans.

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This will be the first significant overhaul of Tiffany's interiors since the company moved to 57th Street in 1940. The second floor, where si *** er and jewelry are sold, will be redesigned as a more spacious complement to the main floor. The fourth floor, now used for watch and clock repairs and si *** er polishing, will become a salesroom, joined to the third floor by a new staircase overlooking Fifth Avenue.

''There will be some disruption, but we think it will be minimal to sales,'' said Michael J. Kowalski, the president and chief executive. ''The timing doesn't concern us. Given the stakes here, there was no question that we wanted to move forward.''

Photo: As part of the $71 million redesign of its flagship store, Tiffany will add a staircase with a view of Fifth Avenue, expanding the sales space from the third floor to the fourth, where repairs and si *** er polishing are now done. (Tiffany & Company)

How to move Tiffany forward while keeping those distinctive qualities that helped to generate $200 million in sales last year at the Fifth Avenue store is something with which the designers are wrestling.

Yabu Pushelberg is also designing the renovation of Bergdorf Goodman, cater-corner from Tiffany, and will soon open a New York studio, Mr. Pushelberg said.

Paloma Picasso, Elsa Peretti and Jean Schlumberger are designers one commonly associates with Tiffany & Company. Yabu Pushelberg is not.