Hobby Lobby closed after less than 2 years

[ClownLoach]

A nearly brand new Hobby Lobby in Irvine, CA has closed after less than two years. Although the shopping center they're in is being proposed for redevelopment to apartments in the distant future (after 2025 if it gets approved for rezoning and the city Master Plan is revised - neither of which are guaranteed to happen) something seems odd about the closure. All of the existing major tenants were supposed to be relocating to other vacancies in the center if they were affected. The neighbors at Barnes and Noble state their end of the center is not part of the redevelopment project, which would mean Hobby Lobby wouldn't have been either. The other end of the center has been all "fill in" type temporary stores for many years aside from a 24 Hour Fitness so it appears that side would be axed for the apartments which probably were in the works long before this Hobby Lobby ever opened. And Hobby Lobby thoroughly remodeled the location including adding a (unnecessary) drop ceiling which they would not have done if it was a short term lease. Personally I suspect Hobby Lobby has too many stores in the area and this one was planned to replace a smaller location in Santa Ana that was in a old OSH store - but then something went wrong or they realized that they put way too many big stores up in the wrong areas and they started begging landlords to let them out because they were hemorrhaging cash. Then they lucked out and were able to break the lease early but only on their newest and best location in the area. They are wasting no time and are already setting up a Halloween City to replace the store for now.

[storewanderer]

How did they close? Did they do a liquidation sale? Irvine has some odd retail closure activity.

Was in the Reno Hobby Lobby last week; neat, clean, fully stocked. Had 3 cashiers, slow checkout even with minimal lines. Small transactions just handfulls of items. This was early evening on a weeknight. Nearby Michaels had a little traffic and Jo Ann was dead. Two panhandlers at the entry asking for money, nobody did a thing to get them to leave.

[ClownLoach]

How did they close? Did they do a liquidation sale? Irvine has some odd retail closure activity.

Was in the Reno Hobby Lobby last week; neat, clean, fully stocked. Had 3 cashiers, slow checkout even with minimal lines. Small transactions just handfulls of items. This was early evening on a weeknight. Nearby Michaels had a little traffic and Jo Ann was dead. Two panhandlers at the entry asking for money, nobody did a thing to get them to leave.

Looks like they just relocated every bit of product and equipment to the soon to open San Luis Obispo store 200 miles north. The website listing for Irvine becomes San Luis Obispo when you click on it.

[Super S]

How did they close? Did they do a liquidation sale? Irvine has some odd retail closure activity.

Was in the Reno Hobby Lobby last week; neat, clean, fully stocked. Had 3 cashiers, slow checkout even with minimal lines. Small transactions just handfulls of items. This was early evening on a weeknight. Nearby Michaels had a little traffic and Jo Ann was dead. Two panhandlers at the entry asking for money, nobody did a thing to get them to leave.

Looks like they just relocated every bit of product and equipment to the soon to open San Luis Obispo store 200 miles north. The website listing for Irvine becomes San Luis Obispo when you click on it.

People aren't going to drive an additional 200 miles when there are Michael's and Jo-Ann stores nearby. Especially at high California gas prices. Hobby Lobby has been known to sometimes make political and/or religious statements regarding how their stores operate...who knows if that is the case here or not though. It does seem rather odd.

[BillyGr]

How did they close? Did they do a liquidation sale? Irvine has some odd retail closure activity.

Was in the Reno Hobby Lobby last week; neat, clean, fully stocked. Had 3 cashiers, slow checkout even with minimal lines. Small transactions just handfulls of items. This was early evening on a weeknight. Nearby Michaels had a little traffic and Jo Ann was dead. Two panhandlers at the entry asking for money, nobody did a thing to get them to leave.

Looks like they just relocated every bit of product and equipment to the soon to open San Luis Obispo store 200 miles north. The website listing for Irvine becomes San Luis Obispo when you click on it.

People aren't going to drive an additional 200 miles when there are Michael's and Jo-Ann stores nearby. Especially at high California gas prices. Hobby Lobby has been known to sometimes make political and/or religious statements regarding how their stores operate...who knows if that is the case here or not though. It does seem rather odd.

Not likely that they expected the customers to go that far, just that if they wanted to close one store quickly and happened to have one getting ready to open not that far away (in general terms), it was just easier & cheaper to move everything from one store to the other rather than selling off everything (at markdown prices), get rid of all the equipment and then buy all new stuff that would have to be shipped to the new store from somewhere anyway!

[storewanderer]

Looks like they just relocated every bit of product and equipment to the soon to open San Luis Obispo store 200 miles north. The website listing for Irvine becomes San Luis Obispo when you click on it.

I guess that is one way to do it... at least the timing for their new store aligned with this store closure.

Such a strange chain.

[ClownLoach]

Looks like they just relocated every bit of product and equipment to the soon to open San Luis Obispo store 200 miles north. The website listing for Irvine becomes San Luis Obispo when you click on it.

I guess that is one way to do it... at least the timing for their new store aligned with this store closure.

Such a strange chain.

They also reuse all their fixtures. They are very old Lozier type where you need the shelf-setter wrench to install the shelf. When they opened the first Santa Ana store I was there a couple of days after they opened and saw empty sections awaiting new seasonal merchandise - the fixtures were old and rusty and they were painting them with that nasty antique white (really dated yellow) paint. So brand new stores sometimes have decades old fixtures.

[storewanderer]

They also reuse all their fixtures. They are very old Lozier type where you need the shelf-setter wrench to install the shelf. When they opened the first Santa Ana store I was there a couple of days after they opened and saw empty sections awaiting new seasonal merchandise - the fixtures were old and rusty and they were painting them with that nasty antique white (really dated yellow) paint. So brand new stores sometimes have decades old fixtures.

The fixtures in their Reno Store appeared to be all new when the store opened. The store was build as Service Merchandise then served as a JCP Home Store. They did a full remodel on the space including restrooms, entry relocation, and reconfigure sales floor/back room positioning and while the store is very bland it did seem like they did an all new interior on it.

Some of their stores back in OK, were very interesting. I was actually surprised the Reno one wasn't a "put the shelves down on the old JCP home store floor/lighting" thing.

I think Hobby Lobby still has "Department Managers" in their stores too. That is probably why the various sections are orderly and neatly stocked. When I look at all of the weird inventory stuff going on at Wal Mart and so much of it would have been prevented if they had Department Managers still... maybe the company saves money with the current chaos/markdown situation but I am not convinced they come out ahead if the current chaos/markdown situation continues. The other issue is when Wal Mart does a reset a number of "new items" will come in at old markdown prices that come out of some black hole in the system (new to set $30 toys for $2, etc.) and the shelf tags print and get put out with those old markdown prices and the items will scan at those prices. This is the type of thing a Department Manager would have caught and rectified.

[norcalriteaidclerk]

How did they close? Did they do a liquidation sale? Irvine has some odd retail closure activity.

Was in the Reno Hobby Lobby last week; neat, clean, fully stocked. Had 3 cashiers, slow checkout even with minimal lines. Small transactions just handfulls of items. This was early evening on a weeknight. Nearby Michaels had a little traffic and Jo Ann was dead. Two panhandlers at the entry asking for money, nobody did a thing to get them to leave.

Looks like they just relocated every bit of product and equipment to the soon to open San Luis Obispo store 200 miles north. The website listing for Irvine becomes San Luis Obispo when you click on it.

People aren't going to drive an additional 200 miles when there are Michael's and Jo-Ann stores nearby. Especially at high California gas prices. Hobby Lobby has been known to sometimes make political and/or religious statements regarding how their stores operate...who knows if that is the case here or not though. It does seem rather odd.

Their political angles are just one reason why that they are one of the few retail that I wish would just go under and go away.I find it blasphemous that they took over the old birdcage Toys-r-us.

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[Bagels]

The older section oft The Market Place is underutilized and isolated. The Irvine Company seems certain that it’ll get approval to bulldoze it and convert it into apartments - I wouldn’t be shocked if they gave a sweet deal to Hobby Lobby, to make their case for the apartments (probably that Hobby Lobby had a sweetheart deal to begin with).

Rumor is that Irvine Company will bring the idea of demolishing Woodbridge Village Center back to the table, but such project wouldn’t begin for awhile. Allegedly Grocery Outlet is way behind on its rent, and most of its tenants are mom and pop shops likely getting a steal on rent. Ruby’s is still vacant as it B&N, which ended a 30-year run and was supposed to be turned into a school. Still, lots of redevelopment - AMC is putting the final touches on gutting and rebuilding the theater, which was always interesting idea given the glut of theater space in and around Irvine. Most screens sit empty these days, in spite of the large number of Chinese films being trialed.