Diane Mastrull: Besides big-and-tall retail, he now does residential rehabs

To be a third-generation clothier still in business says a lot about Mark Rosenfeld's ability to adjust.

With competition nipping at his bottom line, Rosenfeld decided in 1980 that the family business needed a niche. So Torre, a fixture in South Philadelphia for 75 years, started catering exclusively to the big-and-tall man.

Since then, as fashion trends have changed, so have the offerings on the racks inside Torre at 1217 S. Broad St. No sense carrying an abundance of suits and dress shirts when the office world was going business casual, Rosenfeld figured.

When the fit of choice went baggy, or hip-hop, so did Torre's inventory, sending sales "off the Richter scale," Rosenfeld said. That clothes-you-could-swim-in style was replaced by the latest line - showcasing a more conservative but casual look.

Said Rosenfeld, president of the business started in 1937 by his late grandfather, Harry, and a partner: "If lamp shades are what people are wearing on their heads, I'll have a beautiful collection."

Which is why on a recent afternoon, Rosenfeld was talking about wide-plank flooring, wainscoting, granite countertops, and antique wet bars.

The outfitter to many big names wearing big sizes - Wilt Chamberlain, Moses Malone, Shaquille O'Neal, Andy Reid, and Ruben Studdard, among them - is making another adjustment: expanding into residential development.

For now, he's keeping it in the neighborhood, having just completed a makeover of a property from the early 1900s on South Broad Street that served first as a family's mansion, then as a Catholic girls school, and most recently as the headquarters for a Web-based company. He is calling the building, now a high-end apartment house, Rosenfeld's Mansion on Broad Street.

A driveway is all that separates the mansion from the Torre store, between Federal and Wharton Streets. Behind it on South Juniper Street, Rosenfeld is transforming two other properties where Torre once had offices, a warehouse, and tailoring space.

Rosenfeld's late father, Philip, built the Torre store on an empty lot, moving the family business there from a factory it operated on Washington Avenue that employed 200. Philip Rosenfeld closed that plant in 1980 after determining it could no longer compete with Korean-made imports.

When the sawing and hammering comes to a close in late November, nine apartments - ranging from one-bedroom-two-baths to two-bedrooms-two-and-a-half-baths, and renting for $1,200 to $2,750 a month - will join a neighborhood in transition. It is Passyunk Square, home to a widening array of restaurants and homes for young families selling for $500,000 to $700,000.

To that, Rosenfeld is adding upscale apartments topped with roof decks. The latter is a feature he hopes will inspire neighboring property owners to adopt.

"I believe I've started a city in the sky," he said with pride from a beach chair atop his mansion building. To the north, Center City office towers dazzled; to the south, planes eased in for a landing at Philadelphia International Airport.

The Gladwyne resident, 54, has no plans to depart the clothing business, located behind a flashy, star-studded, yellow facade on South Broad. For now, Rosenfeld considers development a supplemental career, one for which the groundwork was started in 1988, when his father bought the first of the Juniper Street properties for $85,000. There, funeral cars were made and later ammunition, before it became an Italian clubhouse.

In 2006, Rosenfeld bought the mansion property at auction for $547,000 and, in 2007, the second Juniper Street building - formerly used for stables and a garage - for $300,000.

Soon after, the recession hit hard, forcing "off the table" Rosenfeld's original plan to renovate the mansion property into a high-end big-and-tall men's store.

Instead, he focused on lowering Torre's overhead.

"When you no longer can attain 20 percent growth" - what Torre was enjoying during those heady hip-hop days - "the way to grow is to lower your overhead," Rosenfeld said.

Torre's annual sales growth over the last few years has dropped to single digits and even into negative territory before returning to where it is now - essentially flat.

Rosenfeld decided to consolidate into the Broad Street store all related operations that were housed in the Juniper Street properties. That move alone saved $110,000 a year in heating, air-conditioning, and lighting costs, he said.

While he waited for the economy to strengthen, he scrapped the idea for another retail store and secured zoning approvals for his apartment projects. He designed them with longtime friend and Philadelphia architect Larry Gilbert of Lawrence Gilbert Architects.

"He has a very good eye for design," Gilbert said of Rosenfeld, crediting him with the retention of stained-glass windows in the mansion and much of the original woodworking and armoires there.

"He realized how important that was to add a lot of detail to the apartments," Gilbert said.

Rosenfeld sees a lot of similarities between the retail clothing business and residential development, including that "they both need marketing, and they're people businesses," but considers development easier because "you can set your own pace. . . . You can decide where you want to buy and for what."

Terri Gladden, office manager and head cashier at Torre, where the Abington resident has worked for 22 years, said she wasn't surprised that the man who has made a career out of clothing hard-to-fit customers was now trying to meet people's housing needs.

"Wherever he thinks there's a niche," she said with a shrug, "that's where he goes."

No word yet on whether Rosenfeld will round up potential tenants to see his properties the way he has gotten pro athletes to his store: by sending limousine buses loaded with cheesesteaks to pick them up at the sports complex.