Burlington stores shrinking

Brian Lutz
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Burlington stores shrinking

Post by Brian Lutz »

In terms of square footage, the Burlington store at Everett Mall is fairly large at around 69,000 square feet, having been built out of what used to be interior space in the mall leading to the (now detached) former Mervyn's space occupied by an Esporta (rebranded LA Fitness) club. It seems that a significant portion of the store (probably around 1/3 of the total space) has now been semi-permanently walled off though, presumably because they can't get enough merchandise to fill the entire space any more. The store's restrooms are in this section, so the effect is that you have to go through a surprisingly long hallway to get to them.

There aren't any other Burlington stores close enough for me to check them, but I wouldn't be surprised to see other large Burlington stores walling off space. Even with the walled off space the store is still significantly larger than any of the Ross/TJMaxx/Marshalls stores in the area.
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Re: Burlington stores shrinking

Post by pseudo3d »

Their new builds seem to have been shrinking by a lot. Older stores from the mid-2000s would take up at least 60k square feet, occupying old Mervyn's or most of a Kmart, but by the late 2010s they seem to be closer to 30k square feet, in the "junior anchor" territory.
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Re: Burlington stores shrinking

Post by arizonaguy »

pseudo3d wrote: February 11th, 2022, 2:36 pm Their new builds seem to have been shrinking by a lot. Older stores from the mid-2000s would take up at least 60k square feet, occupying old Mervyn's or most of a Kmart, but by the late 2010s they seem to be closer to 30k square feet, in the "junior anchor" territory.
They seem to be following the Ross / TJMaxx / Marshall's size model now.
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Re: Burlington stores shrinking

Post by storewanderer »

Brian Lutz wrote: February 11th, 2022, 1:39 pm In terms of square footage, the Burlington store at Everett Mall is fairly large at around 69,000 square feet, having been built out of what used to be interior space in the mall leading to the (now detached) former Mervyn's space occupied by an Esporta (rebranded LA Fitness) club. It seems that a significant portion of the store (probably around 1/3 of the total space) has now been semi-permanently walled off though, presumably because they can't get enough merchandise to fill the entire space any more. The store's restrooms are in this section, so the effect is that you have to go through a surprisingly long hallway to get to them.

There aren't any other Burlington stores close enough for me to check them, but I wouldn't be surprised to see other large Burlington stores walling off space. Even with the walled off space the store is still significantly larger than any of the Ross/TJMaxx/Marshalls stores in the area.
This has been happening for a while. In Reno they have an odd store that is part in a former furniture store (Breuner's it was called) and part was an old movie theater perhaps demolished and a new building built. At one point they expanded into some space that is in the attached mall as well. Basically they expanded the store 3 times. The reason it was expanded 3 times was because it was doing so much sales volume the previous management groups felt the need to expand it. Until the current management group... who... has other ideas, and likes to light and heat big empty spaces. At its largest size the sales floor had an L like layout. This is a really strong performing store. It was easily at 75,000 square feet at its maximum.

Well, in the past 5 years they have been downsizing it. First they surrendered about 15k square feet that had an entry to the attached mall; that is now a Made in Nevada Store (still has the Burlington flooring/carpet). More recently Burlington further shrunk the space they did keep and the sales floor feels like it is now right around 25k square feet. The store still seems very busy but certainly not as busy as before. I suspect however if you did a sales per square foot metric and only counted the space they have merchandise in, sales per square foot are drastically higher than when it was at its largest. However that seems somewhat deceptive as they continue to light, heat, and cool the space they have blocked off.

Also in Carson City Burlington sits in a portion of the former Wal Mart there (early 90's building). They probably took 55,000 square feet of this space. This store too was downsized and the sales floor feels like it is no more than 30,000 square feet now (I haven't been in it in 2+ years so I wonder if they have downsized further).
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Re: Burlington stores shrinking

Post by DFWRetaileWatcher »

Brian Lutz wrote: February 11th, 2022, 1:39 pm In terms of square footage, the Burlington store at Everett Mall is fairly large at around 69,000 square feet, having been built out of what used to be interior space in the mall leading to the (now detached) former Mervyn's space occupied by an Esporta (rebranded LA Fitness) club. It seems that a significant portion of the store (probably around 1/3 of the total space) has now been semi-permanently walled off though, presumably because they can't get enough merchandise to fill the entire space any more. The store's restrooms are in this section, so the effect is that you have to go through a surprisingly long hallway to get to them.

There aren't any other Burlington stores close enough for me to check them, but I wouldn't be surprised to see other large Burlington stores walling off space. Even with the walled off space the store is still significantly larger than any of the Ross/TJMaxx/Marshalls stores in the area.

Anecdotally, I can confirm that I observed the same thing about walled off store space when I was at their Roseville (suburban Detroit) location of similar size in Summer 2020.

Burlington sub-divided old space for Sam's Club (which built a brand new store ground up next to the shopping center on the former site of a Builder's Square / HQ) with Guitar Center. When they first opened, the entire space was utliized with a massive baby department, a massive shoes departments, a massive house/kitchenware department and, of course, numerous aisles specifically for coats & jackets.

Since Burlington has seemingly decided to become another TJ Maxx / Ross / Marshall's clone and is no longer in the "coat factory" business, they have no use for the excess space. In fact, the merchandise that was in stock was a mere small fraction of the inventory they used to carry.
Last edited by DFWRetaileWatcher on February 12th, 2022, 12:46 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Burlington stores shrinking

Post by storewanderer »

DFWRetaileWatcher wrote: February 12th, 2022, 7:23 am

Anecdotally, I can confirm that I observed the same thing about walled off store space when I was at their Roseville (suburban Detroit) location of similar size n Summer 2020.

Burlington sub-divided old space for Sam's Club (which built a brand new store ground up next to the shopping center on the former site of a Builder's Square / HQ) with Guitar Center. When they first opened, the entire space was utliized with a massive baby department, a massive shoes departments, a massive house/kitchenware department and, of course, numerous aisles specifically for coats & jackets.

Since Burlington has seemingly decided to become another TJ Maxx / Ross / Marshall's clone and is no longer in the "coat factory" business, they have no use for the excess space. In fact, the merchandise that was in stock was a mere small fraction of the inventory they used to carry.
Burlington still strikes me as having more to offer than Ross but it seems to be drifting further and further down into a hole where it no longer is any better (what was better about them was they had more products) than Ross.

However Ross seems to have more store density in given markets, closer to neighborhoods. Burlington has fewer locations and if I were living near a Ross I am not sure I'd drive past the close Ross (and probably a second Ross) and spend 15-20 minutes to drive to a Burlington with the current state of Burlington. Maybe they have better location density in other markets than I have observed out west.
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Re: Burlington stores shrinking

Post by mbz321 »

Brian Lutz wrote: February 11th, 2022, 1:39 pm In terms of square footage, the Burlington store at Everett Mall is fairly large at around 69,000 square feet, having been built out of what used to be interior space in the mall leading to the (now detached) former Mervyn's space occupied by an Esporta (rebranded LA Fitness) club.


This is going off topic, but did Esporta put up new signs at this location? Here in Southeastern PA, it seems like the majority of LA's are now 'branded' as Esporta and have been for almost a year now, but they still have LA Fitness branding all over the exterior and any pylons. I don't get it, especially since a handful have not been converted to the Esporta program.
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Re: Burlington stores shrinking

Post by Brian Lutz »

mbz321 wrote: February 13th, 2022, 6:09 pm
Brian Lutz wrote: February 11th, 2022, 1:39 pm In terms of square footage, the Burlington store at Everett Mall is fairly large at around 69,000 square feet, having been built out of what used to be interior space in the mall leading to the (now detached) former Mervyn's space occupied by an Esporta (rebranded LA Fitness) club.


This is going off topic, but did Esporta put up new signs at this location? Here in Southeastern PA, it seems like the majority of LA's are now 'branded' as Esporta and have been for almost a year now, but they still have LA Fitness branding all over the exterior and any pylons. I don't get it, especially since a handful have not been converted to the Esporta program.
I don't think the LA Fitness club has any permanent signs up yet, only banners. I didn't get a good look at it though. From what I understand, higher end clubs will retain the LA Fitness name, with the Esporta name being positioned to compete with "discount" clubs like Planet Fitness (which seems to be expanding quickly) and Crunch.

As for Burlington, they do seem to have larger stores overall, but TJX and Ross both have far more stores in more locations. For example, here in Snohomish County there are two Burlington locations (one at Everett Mall, one on Highway 99 in Edmonds). Within the same county Ross has four locations (Lynnwood, Everett, Lake Stevens and Marysville) plus three more (Woodinville, Redmond and Kirkland) in North King County. TJX has 6 in Snohomish County and several more in King County, where I believe you would have to go all the way down to Auburn (Outlet Collection) to find another Burlington store.
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Re: Burlington stores shrinking

Post by Super S »

Burlington is not a store I regularly visit. However, I have noticed one downsizing which took place some time ago, in Salem, Oregon. That store was formerly a two story Montgomery Ward, at some point the entire second floor was closed to the public and everything was consolidated to the first floor.

They only have a handful of stores and tend to open in larger buildings in my area. I have seen a former Kmart, a former TOP Foods, and a former, older Fred Meyer. I can't say if any of those have been walled off and/or downsized though.
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Re: Burlington stores shrinking

Post by babs »

Before the Holidays, I went into the Cascade Plaza store in Beaverton, OR and noticed that about 20% of the store was walled off. Even with the remaining space, inventory was light. I figured it was because they were short on inventory but now it seems like this is a corporate wide decision. The men's department really felt light and there were no suitcases, which was the reason I went in there originally.
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