JCPenney announces closures of 130-140 stores

Predicting the demise of Sears & Kmart since 2017!
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Re: JCPenney announces closures of 130-140 stores

Post by Super S »

Unlike other chains announcing closures, JCPenney sure is taking their time with this. I have yet to hear anything about confirmed closings. I would bet that there are a lot of nervous JCPenney employees right now.
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Re: JCPenney announces closures of 130-140 stores

Post by wnetmacman »

Boys and Girls, we have a list.

JC Penney says which stores are closing

Of the stores I'm familiar with, there are no surprises. It's mostly the smaller stores. Baton Rouge - Cortana Mall, and Slidell, LA are larger stores. Cortana is becoming a dead mall, with Sears, Macys and now JCP abandoning; the same with Slidell. DeRidder, LA and Marshall, TX are small town stores that are too small to expand or operate in the manner they want to.
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Re: JCPenney announces closures of 130-140 stores

Post by mbz321 »

Oh wow...a couple more in the Philadelphia area than I thought would close.

The Philadelphia Mills (aka Franklin Mills) store was an outlet store (since this was a 'Mills' mall with a traditional lineup of 'outlet' stores) before converting to a regular JCP when they sold off their outlet stores. It probably would have done better if they just kept it as an outlet setup given the nearby demographics and other retailers in the mall.

King of Prussia isn't entirely shocking, as this is a very upscale mega-mall and didn't really fit the area anymore (Sears here closed a few years back). I'm just wondering what they would do with this space as this mall pretty much has everything already (and duplicates of many stores...like 5 (yes 5) Auntie Anne's).

This leaves only two locations left in the immediate Philly suburbs.
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Re: JCPenney announces closures of 130-140 stores

Post by Super S »

I see that Astoria made the list, as did most of the small town stores along Interstate 84 through eastern Oregon. I am a bit surprised though that Kelso, WA has still not made it on to the closing lists. Maybe the store still has just enough sales to get by, but when I see wide open empty spaces in the store it doesn't exactly give me that impression.

I have to wonder just how small of a store they want to operate in certain areas. A lot of the small ones never had appliances and other hard goods the first time around and some of those stores just don't have room.
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Re: JCPenney announces closures of 130-140 stores

Post by Brian Lutz »

There's a store in Snohomish that made the list which I didn't even know existed. Then again, even though I recently moved into that area (Lake Stevens) I haven't spent much time in Snohomish.

Surprisingly, that seems to be the only one closing in Washington. I guess the major mall stores (Southcenter, Northgate and Alderwood) are doing reasonably well?
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Re: JCPenney announces closures of 130-140 stores

Post by Super S »

Brian Lutz wrote:There's a store in Snohomish that made the list which I didn't even know existed. Then again, even though I recently moved into that area (Lake Stevens) I haven't spent much time in Snohomish.

Surprisingly, that seems to be the only one closing in Washington. I guess the major mall stores (Southcenter, Northgate and Alderwood) are doing reasonably well?
The major mall stores seem to be doing ok and are in malls that still seem healthy.
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Re: JCPenney announces closures of 130-140 stores

Post by wnetmacman »

Super S wrote:The major mall stores seem to be doing ok and are in malls that still seem healthy.
That's the key. Penney has been slowly getting out of dying malls. In fact, all of the recent openings they've done in the last 8-10 years have been in standalone and shopping center locations. Of the mall stores going in this round, most are in dying or old malls, or malls that they shouldn't have entered in the first place. A company cannot successfully operate stores from 15000 to 200000 square feet without a lot of scalability, and folks expect certain things from Penney that a 15000 square foot store cannot provide.
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Re: JCPenney announces closures of 130-140 stores

Post by pseudo3d »

Surprised Huntsville TX isn't closing, then again, indications are that it would it move to a newer shopping center seem to be in effect. KOP is a little surprising (Sears closing wasn't too surprising, the real estate there is too valuable to keep it open for the state of the company unfortunately). Destiny USA, one of the "rumored" ones wasn't on there (how many other "wrong" ones were there?), Tanglewood Mall isn't surprising. The mall skated on thin ice in the early 2000s, had a brief comeback in the mid-2000s when a large part of the upper level was kicked out for Steve & Barry's; now with Stein Mart moved to the strip mall portion (originally Woolco), and Goody's now a technical college it's no wonder it's flying the coop.
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Re: JCPenney announces closures of 130-140 stores

Post by SamSpade »

Many of Oregon's smaller communities still have viable daily (or in some cases tri-weekly) newspapers, so there are already stories online about the closures of JCPenney in Astoria and Pendleton.

Pendleton is notable as it is the longest-surviving store still in its original storefront at this point (at least according to locals):
http://www.eastoregonian.com/eo/local-n ... eton-store
Also interestingly enough, JCPenney apparently sold this real estate at some point and was a tenant.

The Daily Astorian, writing about Astoria's store closure. Unfortunately employees were too timid to gossip with the local media:
http://www.dailyastorian.com/Local_News ... in-astoria

Does anyone think Kemmerer only missed the knife because it's the chain's original store?
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Re: JCPenney announces closures of 130-140 stores

Post by wnetmacman »

SamSpade wrote:Does anyone think Kemmerer only missed the knife because it's the chain's original store?
I think Kemmerer exists for the same reason Walmart keeps the storefront on the Bentonville square Walton's. It can't do much in sales; it's just too small.

Keep in mind that while these 138 stores account for almost 15% of the store base, they only accounted for less than 5% of total sales. Lots of coattail riders.
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