J.C. Penney is relocating a North Jersey store from a shopping center to an adjacent mall, where it will occupy a vacant Lord & Taylor anchor space as the latest example of new tenants being found for empty department stores nationally.
The J.C. Penney at the Wayne Towne Center at 260 Wayne Towne Center in Wayne is moving to the nearby Willowbrook, a shopping mall at 1400 Willowbrook Blvd., also located in Wayne. Like many other retailers, J.C. Penney will be reducing its brick-and-mortar footprint, vacating a 245,936-square-foot space to move to 121,000 square feet at 4 Willowbrook Blvd., according to CoStar data.
The demise and shrinking of department-store chains such as Sears, Macy's and Lord & Taylor years ago has retail landlords still scrambling to fill those vacancies and replace lost anchor tenants, who were once the key drivers of foot traffic to malls. The move shows the replacement process can work.
The retailer has already posted a banner sign at the interior entrance to the former Lord & Taylor in Willowbrook. And a sign is posted at the J.C. Penney at Wayne Towne Center announcing it is holding a "relocation clearance event" that ends March 10.
"We were presented with the opportunity to explore new options for our store location and are looking forward to joining the thriving mall community at Willowbrook," a spokesperson for Plano, Texas-based J.C. Penney said in an email to CoStar News.
Willowbrook's local management and the mall's owner, Brookfield Properties, didn't immediately respond to emails from CoStar News seeking comment. Brookfield Properties develops and operates real estate on behalf of Toronto-based Brookfield Asset Management, which is a co-owner of J.C. Penney.
J.C. Penney's plans will leave a big vacancy at Wayne Towne Center. Vornado Realty Trust, the property's landlord, didn't immediately respond to an email seeking comment.
Talk of Moving
On Wednesday night, sales staff at the shopping center's J.C. Penney were telling customers the store was moving to Willowbrook on March 15. In its email, J.C.Penney said its new location would be open by the end of March.
While another retailer has been found for the former Lord & Taylor space in the Willowbrook mall, in other cases the department stores' big boxes are being repurposed for other uses.
For example, HBC, owner of the Hudson’s Bay and Saks Fifth Avenue chains, has plans to redevelop a former Lord & Taylor location at 609 North Ave. in Westfield, New Jersey, into a mixed-use development with office buildings, retail space and 205 residential units.
In 2022, HBC unveiled plans to transform three former Lord & Taylor stores in the Boston area into state-of-the-art space for life science, a commercial real estate sector that has seen strong demand. HBC had once been the owner of the now-defunct Lord & Taylor department store chain, which was liquidated with all its stores closed.
And Hilco Global, headquartered in Northbrook, Illinois, along with Boston-based Gordon Brothers have opened Shopper’s Find, off-price discount stores, at several former Lord & Taylor sites at malls, including Willowbrook. Those closed in 2022.
J.C. Penney had its own travails like other retailers during the pandemic, and it filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in May 2020. Brookfield Asset Management and Simon Property Group acquired J.C. Penney's retail arm through the bankruptcy court. The chain emerged from bankruptcy in December 2020 under the new owners with less debt and about 200 fewer stores.
J.C. Penney will be joining Macy's and Bloomingdales as Willowbrook's anchor tenants. The store's relocation was reported earlier by NorthJersey.com.