JCPenney Remodels

Predicting the demise of Sears & Kmart since 2017!
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Re: JCPenney Remodels

Post by storewanderer »

Super S wrote: August 31st, 2019, 10:17 am
Alpha8472 wrote: August 29th, 2019, 10:19 pm The store is at Sunvalley Mall in Concord, California. It is a reasonably busy mall, and gets lots of customer traffic. The exterior has not changed much since the 60s.

This store must be doing well to be getting such an extensive remodel.
I find it interesting how JCPenney and others focus so much on the interiors while making virtually no changes to the exteriors. The exteriors on some locations are really looking tired.
Is this perhaps due to rules of the mall? Most mall anchor spaces do not seem to get exterior renovations even after interior remodels are done in my observation. The only exception to this is when a tenant change takes place. I always assumed this was to keep the anchor buildings looking consistent with the rest of the mall buildings.
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Re: JCPenney Remodels

Post by Brian Lutz »

In general, it seems that malls don't do exterior remodels all that often, if at all. At Southcenter Mall in Tukwila WA, the JCPenney and Macy's (formerly Bon Marche) have basically the same exteriors they had when the mall opened in 1969.
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Re: JCPenney Remodels

Post by Alpha8472 »

You may be correct. The anchors at Sunvalley Mall all have their original exteriors. The Sears is vintage 1960s. There are 2 Macy's stores. One had a plane crash on the roof in the 80s. They never did anything to change the look even though the sight of a burning Macy's store and dead people was on the news. I would think that they would try to get that image out of people's minds. Every time I see the store, I see the plane on the roof of the burning building. I wasn't there personally, but there is television footage of it.
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Re: JCPenney Remodels

Post by Super S »

Brian Lutz wrote: September 19th, 2019, 8:12 am In general, it seems that malls don't do exterior remodels all that often, if at all. At Southcenter Mall in Tukwila WA, the JCPenney and Macy's (formerly Bon Marche) have basically the same exteriors they had when the mall opened in 1969.
What is interesting though is that, at Tacoma Mall (which has a design very similar to the original portion of Southcenter and also opened in the 1960s) is that the JCPenney received a partial exterior remodel when the third story was added sometime in the 1980s. However, the Macy's looks similar to Southcenter on the outside.

Further south, at Vancouver Mall, the Macy's there received an expansion and renovation just as the name changed from Meier & Frank to Macy's. They completely updated the store inside and out and it is hard to tell that the store was expanded or even that it once was Meier & Frank. (which can't be said about most of their locations)

But it does seem that most anchors do not remodel the outside unless tenant changes take place.
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Re: JCPenney Remodels

Post by Bagels »

I've seen plenty of malls that have been expanded numerous times and feature multiple exterior looks. The only time I've ever seen the exterior updated is on a super upscale mall, and anchor stores that survived after the mall they anchored was demolished.

But JCP creating concept interiors reminds me of K-Mart circa 2002 -- K-Mart created several concepts, despite knowing the company lacked the resources to roll out a company-wide remodel. But consider that Kohls just introduced its new store design and it's bare bones -- similiar to Walmart and Tj Maxx... but cheaper. No fixtures, everything's on moveable racks, one set of registers near the door, with one set of modular dressing rooms behind them.
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