J.C. Penney restructuring to affect outlet store in Jamestown Mall
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
January 25, 2011
By Kavita Kumar
The J.C. Penney catalog outlet store at Jamestown Mall is among the stores affected by the department store's announcement on Monday that it will close some stores, outlets and call centers and finish closing its catalog business.
The retailer said the moves are intended to boost profitability and keep pace with customers' increasing shift to online purchases.
With J.C. Penney exiting the catalog business, all of its 19 catalog outlet stores including the store at Jamestown Mall will be affected, said Joey Thomas, a company spokesman. "We're reviewing options for each of the locations," he said. "That may include closing stores, converting some of them to J.C. Penney stores, and selling the outlet business to another company."
The 124,400-square-foot Jamestown Mall outlet store opened in 1999. Its future looks uncertain given that half of the retail locations in the shopping center are already vacant. A consultant hired by the St. Louis County Economic Council recommended last year that the mall's successful anchors -- the J.C. Penney outlet and a Macy's -- be kept while the rest be demolished to be replaced with a mixed-use "village."
Thomas said there is no definite timeline for the changes, but said they would be rolled out later this year and in 2012.
J.C. Penney has been working to close the catalog business for some time, announcing in November 2009 that it would stop publishing its twice-yearly "big book" catalogs.
Chairman and CEO Myron E. Ullman III said during a conference call that business started to shift heavily away from catalog to online about two years ago.
The company had also faced potential pressure from opinionated shareholders -- activist investor William Ackman of Pershing Square Management and Steven Roth of Vornado Realty Trust. Both Ackman and Roth are joining Penney's board, the company also announced on Monday.
Other changes include closing six underperforming traditional stores, two call centers, and one furniture outlet. J.C. Penney did not disclose how many jobs would be lost. The chain runs more than 1,100 department stores in the U.S. and Puerto Rico.
