Retail Roundup: Party City to close Melville store this spring
The Party City store on Broadhollow Road in Melville will close in May. Credit: Newsday/Daysi Calavia-Robertson
The party is over in Melville.
The Party City store at 610 Broadhollow Rd. in Melville Plaza will close in early May, after 22 years in the shopping center.
“Party City routinely evaluates our portfolio of stores in response to ongoing consumer, market and economic changes that naturally arise in the business. After careful consideration, the Melville store location will close on May 2, 2020,” the Elmsford, New York-based party supply chain said in a statement Thursday.
Party City did not respond to questions about how many employees would be affected by the store closing.
The retailer also did not give a specific answer about why the store was closing, but the chain has been struggling.
Party City Holdco Inc. saw its sales fall last year, mostly due to helium shortages, the closings of dozens of stores and soft Halloween sales at Party City and temporary Halloween stores, the company said in a fourth-quarter and 2019 earnings report released Thursday.
The retailer reported a net loss of $532.9 million in 2019 compared to net income of $122.8 million in 2018.
As part of its “store optimization program,” Party City closed 35 stores in 2019 and 20 more this year that were primarily located close to other Party City stores, the company said in its earnings report.
As of Dec. 31, Party City had 777 company-owned stores and 98 franchises.
The retailer could be facing another tough year amid the coronavirus pandemic, since consumers are ditching group gatherings in droves.
After the Melville store closes, there will still be a bunch of other Party City locations on Long Island — 13 to be exact — to choose from, including stores in Centereach, Carle Place, New Hyde Park, Patchogue and Islip.
The Melville store occupies 13,064 square feet and is the second-largest tenant in the 56,617-square-foot Melville Plaza, according to the website of Pomegranate Real Estate, the Bala Cynwyd, Pennsylvania-based property management company marketing the property. The shopping center is owned by Pom Melville LLC.
Other tenants in Melville Plaza include a Fortunoff Backyard Store, Sherwin-Williams Paints, Suburban Eats and Moe’s Southwest Grill.
Retail Roundup is a column about major retail news on Long Island — store openings, closings, expansions, acquisitions, etc. — that is published online and in the Monday paper. To read more of these columns, click here. If you have news to share, please send an email to Newsday reporter Tory N. Parrish at tory.parrish@newsday.com.
Correction: There is a Party City store on Glen Cove Road in Carle Place. An earlier version of this column listed an incorrect location.
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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