In department store lingo, Fred Lazarus IV's family name is headed for the half-off rack.

At the same time, this move speaks to the decline of downtowns, like Cincinnati's, across America.

Come Friday, 42 Lazarus stores in Ohio, Kentucky, Indiana, Pennsylvania and West Virginia will be renamed Lazarus-Macy's.

"Thanks for letting me know," said Lazarus, whose great-great-grandfather, Simon Lazarus, founded the chain in Columbus in 1851.

"I didn't know it was happening."

He was speaking by phone from Baltimore's Maryland Institute College of Art. Lazarus has been the school's president since 1978.

Lazarus

The news left him neither shocked nor surprised.

"To me and a lot of other people, those stores in Cincinnati are still Shillito's stores," he said.

"And, always will be."

That's understandable, considering his family ties to the Queen City and Shillito's.

Fred IV is the son of two civic-minded Cincinnatians, the late Irma and Fred Lazarus III. Fred III served as Shillito's president and chairman. He was the son of the founder of Federated Department Stores, the parent company of the aforementioned shopping havens.

Fred IV was born and raised in Cincinnati. For most of his life, he associated Lazarus stores with those run by his Columbus cousins. Those establishments were the state capital's top department stores.

"When we'd visit Columbus, we'd go to the downtown Lazarus store," he recalled. "We'd have their famous chicken salad in the tea room."

For generations, Shillito's was synonymous with Cincinnati. Until 1986. That's when the venerable store name - by then in its hybrid form of Shillito Rike's - was replaced by Lazarus.

"My kids were elated," Lazarus said.

"But, not by their name being on the stores.

"They loved the Lazarus shopping bags. They came home raving about their personalized bags. They felt that was so neat."

In his late teens and early 20s, Lazarus spent summers at the downtown Shillito's store, now Shillito Lofts. He worked his way up from selling "children's clothes in the basement store," to stints in the swimwear and mattress departments as well as the in-store pharmacy.

Those summer jobs were meant to prepare him for joining the family business. He even went so far as to earn an MBA from Harvard, class of 1966.

But, upon graduation, he realized his "heart wasn't into the bottom line."

So, off he went to the Peace Corps, the National Council for Equal Business Opportunity, the National Endowment for the Arts and then the Maryland Institute College of Art.

His family ties and work experience give him a well-informed insider's perspective on the stores' name change.

"I wish I could give you a more exciting response," he began.

"Something like 'I'm devastated.' Or, 'I'm so depressed.' "

Yet, he did view the change in the names on the stores in his hometown with some melancholy.

These feelings surfaced as he explained what this change represents.

"It's more than just a different name going on the outside of a building," he said.

Hyphenated and hybrid names in the department store business do not have a long shelf life. Shillito Rike's lasted only four years.

Department stores with local roots, he noted "are pretty much a thing of the past." Since 1984, Cincinnati has lost McAlpin's and Pogue's as well as Shillito's.

"Each one of these stores represented a family business," Lazarus said. "Each one of these families had strong ties to the local community, especially to the downtown area where they had their largest store.

"The lack of these family businesses with strong local ties goes hand-in-hand with the demise of the downtown area, not just in Cincinnati but in similar cities all over America."

Community involvement was a passion with the Lazarus family. Cincinnatians would be hard-pressed to name a local cause that did not involve Irma or Fred Lazarus III.

She tirelessly promoted the arts. He built links between business and the arts, found jobs for the poor and worked to renovate housing in such Cincinnati neighborhoods as Over-the-Rhine.

Lazarus noted how his father and grandfather were "instrumental in the redevelopment of downtown Cincinnati in the 1960s, including the reconfiguration of Fountain Square."

They worked with city government, served on committees, conferred with developers. All for the betterment of Cincinnati.

Such behavior may seem strange today. This is the age of corporate welfare where businesses threaten to leave town if they don't receive millions in subsidies from City Hall.

That's a far cry from the days when the name on the downtown department store belonged to the people in charge.

"The people running these family-owned department stores cared about the city," Lazarus noted. "They focused their energies on downtown and keeping it alive and healthy."

No doubt, they knew this was good for business. But they did this for another reason.

They wanted people to know that their name stood for something more, something better. For everyone.

Cliff Radel, a Cincinnati native, writes about the people, places and traditions defining his hometown. E-mail cradel@enquirer.com.