J.C. Penney to close Green Acres store
J.C. Penney's at Green Acres Mall will be closing on April 24, a company spokeswoman said. Credit: Howard Schnapp
J.C. Penney Co. will close a call center and six stores in April, including a location that has been at Green Acres Mall in Valley Stream for more than 60 years.
It will be the second anchor store to vacate Green Acres Mall in a year, since a Kohl’s closed there in April last year.
The J.C. Penney at Green Acres will close April 24.
“This decision is the result of an ongoing review of our store portfolio. It’s never easy to close a store, however, we feel this is a necessary business decision,” said Kristen Bennett, spokeswoman for the Plano, Texas-based retailer.
The 113,169-square-foot store in Green Acres Mall opened Aug. 6, 1957, and currently employs about 115 people, Bennett said.
“Eligible associates who do not transfer to another J.C. Penney location will receive separation benefits, and all impacted associates may participate in a three-hour career training class,” she said.
The other J.C. Penney stores closing are at the following locations: Southgate Mall in Missoula, Montana; North Hills shopping center in Raleigh, North Carolina; Chapel Hill Mall in Akron, Ohio; Tulsa Promenade Mall in Tulsa, Oklahoma; and Myrtle Beach Mall in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.
A call center in Lenexa, Kansas, will close, too.
About 750 employees will be affected by the closings of the six stores and the call center, Bennett said.
There are still two other J.C. Penney stores on Long Island — in South Shore Mall in Bay Shore and Roosevelt Field mall in Garden City.
J.C. Penney has about 850 stores now.
Like many department store chains, the retailer has been struggling for years as it loses customers to online and big-box competitors.
Last year, J.C. Penney shut down 27 stores, including the one at Smith Haven Mall in Lake Grove.
In 2017, it closed 138 locations, including a store in Massapequa.
Even the boost from holiday traffic didn’t help in 2019.
Sales at J.C. Penney stores open at least one year were down 7.5 percent during the nine-week period that ended Jan. 4, the company reported Jan. 9.
One retail expert blamed the company’s woes partly on “years of neglect.”
“Once loyal customers now avoid the chain and shop elsewhere. This proved to be the case over the holidays as both traffic and shoppers share were down on last year’s already eroded levels,” Neil Saunders, managing director of retail at GlobalData, a Manhattan-based market research firm, wrote in comments on the company Jan. 9.
Tory N. Parrish covers retail and small business for Newsday. She has worked at the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review and Observer-Dispatch in Utica, N.Y.
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