Local stores to close in early 2021
The bankrupt Lord & Taylor has pushed back the closing of its department stores in Stamford and Trumbull and now expects to shut down those locations in February.
In letters to the state Department of Labor, parent company Le Tote announced that it planned to shutter its locations at 110 High Ridge Road in Stamford and the Westfield
Trumbull mall and lay off their employees on Feb. 15 or in the following two weeks. Earlier in the month, it told the department that its Lord & Taylor stores at the Danbury Fair mall and Westfarms mall in Farmington would close on Dec. 28 or in the following two weeks. It had originally said that those four establishments would likely go dark in the first half of December.
“The reason for the postponement of separations is that business conditions, including favorable inventory levels not envisioned at the time of the original notice, have enabled the company to extend store operations for a period beyond the holiday season, benefiting both our teams and communities with this employment extension,” Ed Kremer, Le Tote’s chief restructuring officer, said in the letters about the Stamford and Trumbull locations.
Lord & Taylor has been holding closing sales at the
Connecticut stores since announcing in August that it is shutting down all 38 of its locations. Earlier that month, Lord & Taylor and Le Tote filed for bankruptcy.
About 150 Lord & Taylor employees in Connecticut are expected to be laid off, Le Tote told the labor department in October. The job cuts are expected to include 58 positions in Stamford, 40 in Trumbull, 28 in Danbury and 24 in Farmington. Affected employees are not unionized.
The demise of Lord & Taylor, which is the country’s oldest departmentstore chain and was founded in 1826, did not come as a surprise. Reports had
circulated in recent months that it had been weighing liquidation sales as soon as its stores reopened from temporary closings sparked by the coronavirus crisis.
Its pre-pandemic difficulties contributed to Hudson’s Bay Co.’s decision last year to sell the business to Le Tote, which is a rentalclothing company.
In January 2019, Lord & Taylor shut down its flagship store in Manhattan, ending 104 years in business for the midtown establishment. The property was sold for $850 million to co-working firm WeWork and partner Rhone Capital.