Thursday, August 14, 2008

Mervyn's Closing Stores at Local Malls

Mervyn's announced Wednesday that is will be closing 26 under-performing stores (Avalos, 2008, ¶ 1). The list of closures includes the Mervyn's at Fairfield's Westfield Solano and Antioch's Somersville Towne Center (Avalos, ¶ 2). The Mervyn’s at Newark’s NewPark Mall closed last month, but was not part of the bankruptcy closings. Other non-mall closures of Mervyn’s include Livermore’s Plaza 580, Napa’s downtown, Reno, Sparks, and Carson City, NV.

With department store consolidations, the number of anchor stores available for traditional malls has dramatically decreased. Macerich, owners of Somersville Towne Center, may be hard-pressed to find an available tenant to replace Mervyn’s. The nearest Kohl’s is located in Brentwood. However, this does open the opportunity for redeveloping the store site as an entertainment venue similar to that being considered for NewPark Mall. Solano mall already has a cinema, so Westfield might have more difficulty in finding a replacement. The nearest Kohl’s is in Vacaville and few alternative anchors are available. With retail spending down, both Somersville Towne Center and Westfield Solano might just be without a fourth anchor tenant for a few years.

The Mervyn’s stores are expected to close in late October or early November (Avalos, 2008, ¶ 2).

Reference
Avalos, G. (2008, August 14). Mervyns closing four Bay Area stores; two in East Bay. InsideBayArea.com. Retrieved from http://www.insidebayarea.com/ci_10191226?source=most_emailed

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

You may want to update this article, as Mervyn's is closing ALL of their remaining stores, I'm sorry to say. Farewell to an original Bay Area institution!

RIP Mervyn's
1949-2008 :(

Tupac Chopra said...

KB Toys is closing all their stores too. If this sort of thing keeps happening, there aren't going to be enough retailers to fill the malls anymore.