Macys To Close Nine "Under Performing" Stores - Canton, OH On The List

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Lake Charles, La. is the closest to me, about 50 miles away. I wonder which Houston locations are closing? My parents live near one and I usually go to it when I visit.
 
I've heard some ugly (and hopefully false) rumors that Macys is considering closing the former flagship Marshall Fields store on State Street.

I know that I've personally been very disappointed with our former Bon Marche store since it started its slide into Macys. Maybe it was all the hype of how much "better" it would be once they converted, but I'm not seeing it. And the former Meier & Frank in downtown Portland is pretty much a dud as Macys.

I never thought Macys was that quality of a store to begin with. I don't know why they had to convert everything over to it.

...and don't even get me started on Nordstrom, and how they ruined the old Frederick & Nelson store (a former Marshall Fields division) in downtown Seattle.
 
Marshal fields

I think Mashall field store will remain open but only under the macys name. There was alot of protest when they changed the name. I had just moved here when all that was going on.
 
For the most part the era of large department stores is dying. Between the Interent, Walmart, Target and other factors, the concept of an all in one large store is pretty much gone. Lord knows Sears isn't doing that well, JC Penny and others are shells of their former selves and so forth.

Even in the few remaining department stores, one rarely sees the sorts of goods once found. Time was when Macys,JC Pennys, Sears, and the like sold everything from appliances to electronics, to automotive, to home furnishing, to clothing and so forth. You could get everything you needed to fit out a new home from such stores, but no more.

Even Macys's huge flagship store on Hearld Square in NYC leaves much to be desired. Haven't shopped there in ages, but can tell you if the tourists ever stopped going in numbers, the place would shut down.

L.
 
Macy's & Houston

The Sharpstown Macy's (formerly Foley's Store #2 which opened in 1963 as Houston's first indoor air conditioned mall) is being closed due to competition with the First Colony Macy's about 10 miles down the road and the general decline of Sharpstown Mall. The southwest side of Houston has become more of a gangland territory more than anything else. In the mid 80's Sharpstown Mall was renovated with a second floor being added. It was very nice and business boomed. Everything was fine until the mid 90's when J.C. Penny packed up and left, then Wards failed and then finally the last anchor (Foley's now a Macy's) was the only one left. I was last in there about three years ago and there was only about one operating business for every three or four storefronts. Plus the place was full of what seemed like gangland figures. There have been a few shootings in that mall over the past few years as well.
You know what happens to a mall when it loses all of it's anchors. It dies. I don't think that African Queen Imports and a Afro Sheen store will keep the entire mall open. It's not just the mall that is bad, the whole area has undergone a major demographic turnover in the past 10 years. This Christmas they had a special program where you could request an armed guard to walk you to your car and stay with you until you drove away. Now that's bad!
Since the area is surrounded by public housing type of complexes I suspect that the mall will be torn down and high rise public housing will be built on the site, ala Cabrini Green in Chicago.

As for Marshall Field & Company (now Macy's) downtown store it depends what will happen when Caron Pirie Scott & Company closes it's State Street store later this year. It will be turned into a community college from what I understand. Macy's really likes to wring ever bit of profit from each of their stores. If a store doesn't meet it's quota it can be closed. Personally, I think it'll close within the next 5 years. Such a shameas at one time State Street was lined with great department stores such as Marshall Field, Carson's, Weiboldts, Goldblatts, etc.
Last year when we went to Lake Forest for Christmas we drove into downtown and did a tour of the original Marshall Fields store. It was amazing how much it had changed. A lot of the top brands were gone and replaced with much cheaper merchandise. We got up to the third floor and left. Such a shame.
 
I think that department stores could still play an important role in increasingly dense downtowns, but they are 20 years behind in the marketing.

Take downtown Seattle: Like many cities, they are building housing like crazy there, and there is a real need for a place where you can buy the "oven mitts and sweat socks" of life, but Macys focuses on high end kitchen stuff and mid-range office clothing, because that's what they downsized into back in the 60's and 70's, when downtown closed at 5pm. As a result, all these newcomers have to go out to the suburbs to buy things that they need, and that they used to be able to buy at The Bon, or places like Woolworths.

I have a friend who has worked at the Bon since the days when they sold TV sets and sewing notions (which wasn't that long ago) and she has argued that they can make money on high-volume notions and housewares for all the new residents, but the corporate office won't budge. They're afraid to think outside the marketing box. Another bad side effect of all this consolidation - the stores don't even know their local markets.
 
Not too surprising to see the Canton store close.

We have two Macy's stores here and this one is located in the first enclosed mall built here in the mid 60's. It's a large store and was one of the the anchors, along with JC Penney and Wards. The wing of the mall that had Wards was torn down a couple years ago to build a Walmart Supercenter. Rumors have been around that the entire mall was going to be re-developed into something new, whatever that means. I'm surprised that it has stayed open this long.

The other store is in a large mall to the north of the city that rarely has a vacancy and is going to have a large expansion starting sometime next year.

Two other stores to the north in Akron and the Cleveland area are in the same situation and closing as well.

Bill
 
Wow this is a great topic. Macys sucked up Filenes here in the Boston area. Changed the name and got rid of the Filenes name. I am not a fan of Macys and never will be.
When I lived in the burbs of Chicago I loved going to Marshall Fields at the Woodfield Mall. Carsons was a nice store as well but they were at the Stratford Square mall in Bloomingdale.
When I lived in Omaha I was starting to like Von Maur and Dillards. I wish we had Dillards here in the Boston area...would give a nice kick in the pants to Macys. Nordstroms is building new stores here but they are way too pricey for my wallet. I went to the one in Natick at the Natick Collection and I felt like I didnt belong shopping there besides 600 bucks for a shirt is a bit much. I am a Target and Kohls kinda guy. When Kohls put alot of the stuff in the 80% or more off racks and I usually kind find hit it right and find alot of great stuff. What was once $42 is marked down to $7. And this is when they change from Fall to winter clothes and so on. I find alot of people wait for the clearance racks. We went in there one time and we filled a shopping cart...came up to $125. We tallied up the original price tags on the items when we got home...was well over $700. I love to shop like that...
 
Update:
On the news tonight there was a clip about why Macy's is closing the Sharpstown store. It is the worst performing store in the entire Macy's chain. That's why it's being closed. Little wonder based on the reasons I cited above.

Now about 10 years ago or so, Joske's another nice dept store here in Houston was taken over by Dillards. Nothing seemed to change. The store was still kept nice and actually moved a little bit more upscale. We like Dillards too.

Kohl's has been in Houston about three years and is doing well.
The insides of the stores is almost identical to a Mervyn's store. Same granite floors, same floor plan, etc. Mervyn's did real well here. That was before Mervyn's became "Mervyn's California" and screwed up their stores so bad they eventually pulled out of the Houston market completely.
 
My understanding from the first article link is that all the stores being shut down were previously May Company stores, and that the May customer base was more used to brand names and discount coupons rather than the Macy house brand approach.

A Kohl's opened up on my town about a year or two ago. I haven't been there yet; not big on malls or big department stores. Plus they don't have much of a power tool department ;-)
 
Yes, Foley's started out being a Federated Department Store (Filenes, Riches, Ralph's, Sanger Harris, I. Magnin, etc.) but DF May took them over in the early 80's. They stopped carrying Armani and other designer suits and replaced them with Botany 500, after the Botany line became cheap. Just for an example. It seems that DF May demanded a higher profit margin per store than Federated did. For quite some time they were threatening to close the downtown Foley's, but never did. Downtown Houston has somewhat revitalized over the past 10 years or so with loft apts and upscale townhomes. So there is a future for that store. The building that houses the downtown Macy's is the largest sandstone exterior building in the state of Texas.
 
The news spot tonight announced that the close out sale at Macy's will start on January 13. They will sell the store down to the bare walls before they close it, which is expected to happen by the end of the month.
 
Macy's has continued the trend begun by May Co in the late 80's. The May Co rampage began when they acquired Associated Dry Goods, parent company of "carriage trade stores" such as Lord & Taylor(NY), Hahne's(Newark), JW Robinson(LA), Joseph Horne(Pittsburgh), H&S Pogue(Cincinnati), LS Ayres(Indianapolis), Powers Dry Goods (Minneapolis), The Denver Dry Goods Co(Colorado, Robinsons of Florida and Goldwater's (Arizona). Each of those stores was the highest end store in their market and their merchandise reflected the geographic differences of their individual locations.

The first thing May Company did was close all downtown flagship stores and then merge each group of stores into their existing geographic grouping keeping only the names they believed would have the most recognition. Of course the merchandise mix was overhauled to reflect their mass market buying strategy relying on high volume middle market goods. The funny thing was that by the time they were finished with a store, they didn't even need the original names anymore. Every single May Co store looked the same, was laid out in the same way and even smelled the same. If you didn't see the name, you really wouldn't know if you were in Kaufmann's or Foley's.

They repeated the same exercise with their acquisition of Carter Hawley Hale Stores, former parent of the Broadway, John Wanamaker, Weinstock's, Thalheimer Bros, etc.... Luckily Bergdorf Goodman and Neiman Marcus were not part of that acquisition and were part of a leveraged buyout.

And let's not even get into what they did when they acquired Filene's and Foley's from Federated as a result of the Robert Campeau induced bankruptcy.

Macy's was no better- when Federated sold Filene's and Foley's to May Co, they also sold Bullock's and I Magnin to Macy's. What a disaster - to see a beautiful store like I. Magnin reduced to a mid line almost department store was like a knife in the chest.

As to Macy's, well, their stores in my area are some of the most depressing - badly maintained, dirty with poor merchandise selections unattractively displayed. I feel like we are being held hostage since we really have no other department store choices.

I believe you will see more Macy closings - they had their year of playing nice, now the gloves are off. I say good for Chicagoans who have showed their loyalty to Marshall Field's. It may not appear that they are making any impact - but they are speaking out and their actions are making a statement.
 
Allen, I was afraid the Sharpstown store would be the one. That was Foleys very first suburban store, 1961 or early 1962. My aunt began working for them in the mid 1950s. She moved out to the new Foleys and was head of bridal registry and china dept. That is where 4 of my sets of dishes came from, the Johnnson Brothers Regency was a Foleys grand opening special soon after we moved to the new house in 9/61. That's why my mom and two of the neighbors (the Lady Ke3nmore combo and the L110 Westinghouse washer) all got the same dishes. That's also the same store where I bought my GE washer & dryer in April, 1978.
 
We were living in Denver when they closed The Denver stores. We couldn't believe that it was being shut down. I'll tell you they had one hell of a sale!

If you think Sharpstown has fallen into hard times, have you been to Greenspoint Mall in Houston? It opened in 1980-1 and similarly to Sharpstown had JC Penny, Wards, Foley's as anchor tenants. JC Penny moved out in the late 90's and Wards went bankrupt. Both of those stores are still empty as is about 60 percent of the individual stores inside. The only thing saving it is a rather large food court which handles the lunch time traffic for the oil company employees working in nearby mid rise office buildings. But Dillard's is still hanging in there.

When Foley' opened the Greenspoint store it was the first to feature a traffic pattern like a maze. There was no way to get from one part of the store to another in a straight line. this was intentional to expose each customer to a maximum amount of product during their visit to the store. We had a neighbor that was in Foley's management. I learned a lot about retail from him. Getting back to Foley's, now the store has about 40% of its sales floor shut down and sealed off. It's dirty, ceiling tiles missing all over the place, hardwood floors that are buckled up. Of course it's now a Macy's.
Like Sharpstown, the Greenspoint area went into a decline. A lot of apartments in the area went Section 8 when everyone started relocating to other places. Greenspoint has a national reputation as being called "Gunspoint" due to shootings inside that mall. We recently had one a few weeks ago.
Personally, I think Dillards is picking up a lot of the business from Macy's. I won't shop Macy's here as I won't shop Macy's in Chicago either.
 
Allen, Northwest mall wasn't much different than Greenspoint Mall. it was already beginning to meet a similar demise when I was transferred out of Houston in 1986. I was in the first full 3-year graeduating class of Sharpstown High. That was in 1973. A list of poorly performing schools in Texas was recently published and it was on the list, right uup there with Wheatley and other similar type of schools. From what I hear, Asian gangs rule my old HS and the neighborhoods.
 
Nordstrom

I love Nordstrom! We do almost all of our shopping there. I also agree with John,Kohl's is awesome! Much better than Ross or TJ Maxx in my humble opinion.
I very rarely, if ever shop at Macy's. It is NOT the store I knew growing up in the NY Metro area. I am glad they have to close these stores. They should have left Marshall Field's as is......Serves them right!
 
Jordan Marsh

Growing up in Mass., Jordan Marsh was the store. They sold pretty much everything, use to go in the 60's to look at color TV. You could spend the day in the store going to all the departments and have lunch there too. Had a great bakery too!
 
"As to Macy's, well, their stores in my area are some of the most depressing - badly maintained, dirty with poor merchandise selections unattractively displayed. I feel like we are being held hostage since we really have no other department store choices."

I was a part-time Macy's employee for several years in the early eighties and I can tell you the place is a shell of its former self.

The store I grew up with, on Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn, closed several years ago, largely because of high inventory losses and an extremely deteriorated physical plant.

I was in the former A & S store in downtown Brooklyn and they wisely did not "modernize" extensively, so the store still retains elements of its former grandeur (like the beautiful glass and accordion elevator doors I remember from childhood) but the merchandise was poorly stocked and displayed, and there were virtually no sales personnel present.

When Whirlcool describes the Sharpstown store in Texas, I was reminded of certain aspects of the Macys Parkchester store in the Bronx, which I cannot imagine will last much longer.

In my neighborhood, we had THREE Macy's stores in one four-mile radius, until, happily, Century 21 took over the former Stern's location.

I was actually thinking about picking up a four-cup Farberware percolator on sale for the weekday coffee, but I keep asking myself, is the aggravation of stopping in at that mall worth saving five dollars?

"I love Nordstrom! We do almost all of our shopping there."

Yes, I agree! I love it as well, although I definitely cannot afford to do the majority of my shopping there.

They carry brands (and lines of brands) of a higher quality then the other stores do, and if I'm going to spend the money, I want the best possible selection. Their sales help seem nicer and more knowledgeable and helpful than at Lord and Taylor or Bloomie's, and, having worked retail for so many years, I'm hardly a demanding customer!

In the other stores, I sometimes feel merchandise for men is just an afterthought...in Nordstrom's, I feel as though my tastes and sensibilities are respected, even if I can't afford it half the time....

I guess I'm a bipolar shopper....my favorite stores are Wal-Mart/Target, and Nordstrom's, and the middle ground be damned.

The one conversion to Macy's that left the worst taste in my mouth was not the A&S or Stern's stores, believe it or not, but the former Wanamaker's store in downtown Philadelphia.

I still love Philly but a little bit of the old magic is gone...
 
For us Brooklynites, the transition of Abraham and Straus to Macy's was probably as traumatic as the Marshall Field conversion for Chicagoans. I recall in my childhood, the downtown flagship at Fulton and Hoyt Streets was THE place to shop - beautiful merchandise, white gloved elevator operators and all that Art Deco glamour. And on the escalators going from the first to second floors, the letters "A" and "S" were intertwined with the scrollwork on the glass sides. Funny how we remember certain things. I remember my mother needing a dress for a very important wedding and searching relentlessly for a dress and hat (it was the late 50's) and finally finding a pink formal Elsa Schiaparelli dress at A&S. According to all reports that dress was a showstopper.

Alas, with the decline of Brooklyn in the 60's and 70's Federated began to neglect the A&S division and it too was a shell of its former self when it was finally merged into Macy's. Federated did try to upscale and expand the division in the mid to late 80's, but the Campeau acquisition of Federated and Allied happened soon after and the rest is history...
At least they didn't close the flagship - neglect aside, it is still a beautiful architectural building and the only remaining department store on Fulton Street - everything else, JW Mays, Martin's, Nam's, Loeser's, Oppenheim and Collins are long since gone some even before I came along.
 
As a footnote...

There is a monument by the Sharpstown Golf Club building commemorating Sharpstown. It reads:

"Sharpstown, the world's largest planned subdivision" 1956.

Bill Sharp planned it and built it but around 1961 there was a scandal. I seemed Mr. Sharp built the place on a financial pyramid scheme.
In 1961 that pyramid collapsed on him.
 
I guess I'm a bipolar shopper....my favorite stores are Wal-Mart/Target, and Nordstrom's, and the middle ground be damned.

Well then the majority of the country must be too. I saw a news report today about Christmas shopping and the big winners were the bottom line stores and the very top, like Nordstroms.

I love the customer service at Nordstroms, especially the Mall of America location. I bought a couple of suits there last summer. Just two of them, and the salesman couldn't have been better if he tried. Just outstanding.
 
Well much of that may be the only persons doing really well at the moment for the most part, are the very well off. The rest of us, which includes the working poor, poor, and what is left of the middle-class are either in dire straits, or spending wisely in uncertian times.

Didn't go crazy with spending this year, and never do on Christmas. The holiday is supposed to be about the spirit of giving, goodwill and remembering the birth of our Lord. Not spending a whole lot of money one does not have just to make a fancy splash.

L.
 
Same is true here - I carefully re evaluated my shopping this year for Christmas and tried to limit spending but still give imaginative and useful gifts. Amazing what a little planning and thinking will do.
I did more with my church, donating time and buying for needy families and I must say that I felt more Christmas spirit than I have in a long time.

And you're right, "L", no trip downtown was complete without a stop at Junior's - I still do that occasionally. One of my faves was their "Broadway" ice cream soda which was a chocolate soda with coffee ice cream. Now that was a grand treat!!!
 
"And you're right, "L", no trip downtown was complete without a stop at Junior's - I still do that occasionally. One of my faves was their "Broadway" ice cream soda which was a chocolate soda with coffee ice cream. Now that was a grand treat!!!"

Me, too. The very chi-chi "Kings" supermarket by me also sells their cheesecakes for $15 a pop.

Did you know there is only one "Jahn's" ice cream parlor left?

In Jackson Heights, and I bet its days are numbered. :)
 
The Demise of Early Suburbia . .

It's amazing how the suburban areas of Dallas and Houston have changed since the 1980's! I have friends from the suburbs of Duncanville, De Soto, Grand Prairie and Cedar Hill. Each of these suburbs were very nice in the 1970's and 1980's, but have now all pretty much become bad. Even Irving, which was also very nice years ago is now a scary place to even drive through! It seems like the southern suburbs were the places to go in the 1980's, but now everyone is moving north.

It's also sad to see the Houston Suburbs like Sharpstown, Greenspoint (a.k.a. "Gunspoint") and others falling into such decline. It seems like people continue to move further out from the city center, or they are moving back into the gentrified areas of downtown - while these early suburbs continue to deteriorate. At this rate, I wonder what The Woodlands will look like in 50 years (and Huntsville becomes the "New Woodlands"). LOL.

Bryan
 

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