Fate of local Macy’s up in the air

NORTH ATTLEBORO — The Macy’s store at Emerald Square mall is facing an uncertain future.

Macy’s announced Tuesday it’s closing 50 more of its namesake stores this year and a total of 150 over the next three years while planning to open smaller stores outside malls and expand its upscale Bloomingdale’s and Bluemercury chains. The locations of the stores to be closed haven’t been revealed.

Macy’s is one of two anchor stores at the Route 1 mall that, like other malls nationwide, has a high vacancy rate its owners and town officials have been working to address. The other is original anchor JCPenney. In 2006, the Filene’s store at the mall became Macy’s.

Macy’s said it planned to close “underproductive locations” that account for 25 percent of the company’s overall square footage but just 10 percent of sales. The company said it expects to make up to $750 million by closing the stores and streamlining some of its warehouses.

The announcement marks the second major downsizing of the Macy’s chain since 2020, when it closed about 100 stores. It would leave the company with 350 stores, slightly more than half the number it had before the pandemic.

The iconic department store chain had said in January it was cutting about 3.5% of its workforce and closing five of its mall stores by the end of last month to reduce costs and turn around slowing sales. Those cutbacks impacted roughly 2,350 positions across its corporate offices and stores.

Since 2015, the company has closed about 300, or almost one-third, of its stores.

The news of the latest planned store closings comes as a new chief executive, Tony Spring, has been brought on to keep the largest department store operator in the country profitable and prevent a pending takeover bid.

The plans are aimed to “accelerate our path to market share gains, sustainable, profitable growth and value creation for our shareholders,” Spring said in a statement.

The company posted a $71 million loss in the fourth quarter, which included holiday sales, but income and revenue were above Wall Street expectations. It posted a profit of $508 million last year in the same period.

Sales fell to $8.12 billion, down nearly 2% from a year ago, but also better than analysts had expected.

The company announced plans in October to add up to 30 smaller Macy’s stores outside malls through the fall of 2025, bringing that number to about 40.

And it plans to open 15 of its higher end Bloomingdale’s stores and 30 of its luxury Bluemercury cosmetics locations while remodeling others.

Last month, Macy’s rejected a $5.8 billion takeover offer from the hedge fund Arkhouse Management and Brigade Capital Management.

Even before the pandemic, department stores were struggling in the face of competition from online rivals and discount stores. JCPenney filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.

Macy’s has been around for 166 years, opening its first store in 1858, and is well known for sponsoring the annual Thanksgiving Day Parade in New York City.