Austin’s jobless rate holds steady at 3.5%
Pittsburgh-based sporting goods chain said to have paid $70M at auction; many locations might close.
The Central Texas job market maintains its healthy pace of pace of payroll growth, rising 3 percent from this time last year.
Struggling Austin retailer Golfsmith was acquired Friday in a bankruptcy auction for about $70 million, according to media reports.
The winning bidder was Pittsburgh-based Dick’s Sporting Goods, Reuters news service reported, citing unnamed sources.
Dick’s, which also owns the Golf Galaxy and Field & Stream chains, plans to keep about 30 Golfsmith locations open and will liquidate the rest, according to Reuters.
It wasn’t clear which stores would stay open and which would close, whether the Golfsmith name would live on or if the company would continue to have a corporate presence in Austin.
At the time of its bankruptcy filing last month, Golfsmith had about 100 locations, including two in Central Texas: 11000 Middle Fiskville Road in North Austin and 10001 Research Blvd. in the Arboretum area.
Golfsmith previously warned that a failed auction could potentially prompt the company to shut down. Its filing in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Delaware listed debts and assets of as much as $500 million each.
A joint venture of Fairfax Financial Holdings Ltd. and CI Investments Inc. offered last month to buy the company’s Canadian business, which operates under the Golf Town brand.
A Golfsmith spokesperson didn’t respond Friday to a message from the American-Statesman seeking comment.
Dick’s beat out another bidder, Worldwide Golf Shops, Reuters
reported. That company, which operates the Edwin Watts Golf, Roger Dunn Golf Shops, The Golf Mart, Golfers Warehouse, Uinta Golf and Van’s Golf Shop chains, reportedly intended to keep about 30 Golfsmith locations open, as well, with plans to liquidate the rest.
News of the pending acquisition came the same day six Dick’s stores, two Golf Galaxy locations and two Field & Stream stores opened in the greater Houston area, as the retailer continues to make an aggressive push into the Texas sporting goods market, which has long been dominated by Katy-based Academy Sports + Outdoors.
In Central Texas, Dick’s currently has three stores, situated at The Domain in North Austin, the Hill Country Galleria in Bee Cave and Stone Hill Town Center in Pflugerville. A fourth Dick’s, as well as the area’s first Field & Stream, will open next year in The Parke, a new shopping center being built in Cedar Park by Austin-based developer Endeavor Real Estate Group.
Dick’s Golf Galaxy brand previously had a presence in Austin, but pulled out of the market several years ago.
Golfsmith has been headquartered in Austin since 1973 and currently has about 350 employees at its corporate offices and its two Central Texas stores, the company told the American-Statesman last month.
Before calling Austin home, Golfsmith founders Carl and Barbara Paul ran the company out of their home in Edison, N.J. It got its start in 1967.
Until the 1990s, the company primarily operated as a catalog business.
Golfsmith’s first major round of expansion began in 1995. Seven years later, First Atlantic Capital bought a majority stake. Eventually Golfsmith merged with Golf Town and was taken over by OMERS Private Equity Inc., part of the Ontario municipal employees’ pension fund.