PORTLAND -- Nordstrom announced Wednesday it plans to close its Lloyd Center and Vancouver Mall stores, due to poor performance.
Both stores will close in January of 2015. Nordstrom's president said keeping the stores open and investing in costly remodels didn't make good business sense.
The Lloyd Center store has been open since 1960 and the Vancouver store has been open since 1977, Brooke White of Nordstrom said.
This was a tough decision to make because we ve been doing business at Lloyd Center and Vancouver Mall for a long time and we care a great deal about the community, our customers and our employees here, said Erik Nordstrom, president of stores for the company.
The closure will impact 384 employees between the two stores. The company, however, said they will try to move employees to positions at nearby Nordstrom and Nordstrom Rack stores, if possible.
The company will still operate its downtown Portland, Washington Square, and Clackamas Town Center stores along with Clackamas, Tanasbourne, Portland and Cascade Plaza Nordstrom Rack stores.
Our company is still growing. We re investing in our full-line stores, building and expanding our Rack stores and continuing to hire, said Nordstrom. Though these two locations don t work for us anymore, we re still very committed to our customers and employees here. We have a long history in the Portland area and really love serving this community.
Cypress Equities, the management company for Lloyd Center, said the mall s owners intend to purchase the 130,000-square-foot building.
We believe the Nordstrom building might better serve Lloyd Center shoppers if it featured alternative uses, said Chris Maguire, chief executive officer for Cypress Equities. Our leasing team is exploring other retail and service options that will not only complement the mall s existing merchant mix, but provide our shoppers with unique offerings not available at other Portland-area shopping centers.
Cypress Equities said they would announce their plans later in the year but were looking into finding new uses for the building.
