In smaller towns, empty storefronts, economic challenges loom large

CANTON, Ill.—When J.C. Penney announced plans to close up to 140 then-unnamed stores earlier this year, officials in the central Illinois city of Canton dashed off a letter urging the company to spare the department store that sat just off the leafy park in the town square.

It wasn’t just that the decades-old store and the shopping center it anchored had gotten a recent facelift, or that it seemed as much a part of the town as the murals depicting local history painted on one of its outside walls.

Canton was still recovering from a November natural gas explosion that killed one person and damaged more than 100 downtown businesses. And J.C. Penney—the only department store in Fulton County—drew shoppers and their gas, restaurant and sales tax dollars to the city of 14,700 about 30 miles southwest of Peoria.

It didn’t work. The store closed in July and its signs have since been taken down.

“That was the last place in town you could buy decent clothes. The only place left is Walmart,” said Kenneth Hamm, owner of Canton’s K&L Antiques shop.

Since the start of the year, U.S. retailers have announced 5,699 store closures, according to Fung Global Retail & Technology, driven by retail bankruptcies, cost-cutting moves and, for a growing number of department stores and big-box chains, decisions to invest in top-performing stores that fit their new strategies.

And when a Sears, J.C. Penney or Macy’s pulls out of small-town America, the same factors that sent those retailers packing can make the big vacant storefronts they leave behind challenging to fill.

“The sad part to me is the malls. Walmart and Menards opened stores in all those markets, and they already killed the downtown. Now if these boxes are going to close, what’s left?” said Meredith Oliver, managing direc-