San Francisco – The Mervyns department store chain plans to close nearly a quarter of its stores nationwide – including all but one of its 11 stores in Colorado – and lay off 4,800 employees as its new owners attempt to improve the retailer’s profitability.
The Hayward, Calif.-based company said today it will close 62 stores in eight states. All Mervyns stores in Michigan and Oklahoma, and some in Colorado, Louisiana and Texas, will close by February 2006.
Colorado has 11 stores, most of them scattered along the eastern slopes of the Rockies from Fort Collins to Pueblo. The company said it will close 10 stores next year in a move that will affect 162 full-time positions and 584 part-time jobs.
The Mervyns in Grand Junction, which in 1983 was the first to open in Colorado, will be the only store left in the state.
“I think they initially will be missed by those customers that regularly shop there,” Colorado Retail Council President Jo Ann Groff said. “I think there will obvious sales tax implications for the malls and the communities in which they are located.
“In the long run, the sales that happened at those stores, the purchases that were made there will still be made somewhere in Colorado,” she said.
The company also will close three stores in California, Oregon and Utah, and two distribution centers in Texas and Utah.
The stores were money-losers and comprised just 17 percent of total sales, Mervyns said in a statement. About 1,200 full-time employees and 3,600 part-time workers will be laid off.
Mervyns LLC was sold last year by Target Corp. to a private investment consortium in a deal worth $1.65 billion.
