WSS shoe store owners lease large empty retail space
Company pushes into city for the first time with deal
SAN JOSE >> A shoe store chain that’s in expansion mode has leased a large commercial space south of downtown San Jose in a deal that suggests some retailers can thrive despite an array of economic uncertainties.
WSS has leased a former Smart & Final store on Monterey Road in San Jose, across the street from The Plant retail and restaurant complex.
Los Angeles-based WSS has leased the entire building, which is about 13,300 square feet, according to David Taxin, a partner
with Meacham/Oppenheimer, a commercial real estate firm who arranged the rental deal.
“This is their first San Jose store,” Taxin said.
Beyond the company’s expansion into San Jose, the deal, in Taxin’s view, runs counter to the notion that brick-and-mortar retailers are in permanent decline
because of the rise of online shopping and the onset of the coronavirus.
“People are talking about the death of retail, but here is a retailer who is a little
more bullish on the market than some have been,” Taxin said.
The San Jose lease was completed around the same time Foot Locker was in the final stages of completing a purchase of WSS, a deal that concluded in September 2021. WSS will remain a separate brand of Foot Locker, the new owner has stated.
Taxin said the leasing deal by WSS in San Jose is larger in square footage than the typical retail rental transaction and completely fills a space that had been empty for about a year after Smart & Final closed its doors at that location.
WSS should be opening its new shoe store sometime in the next one to two months.
“We are getting calls for space from national retailers,” Taxin said. “Some folks in retail think good things are happening. The pandemic didn’t help. But if the coronavirus can’t kill off brick-and-mortar retail, I don’t know what can.”