A top Nordstrom Inc. executive said Thursday morning that the company chose to close the downtown Indianapolis store after
sales plummeted when it opened a north-side location in 2008.
Nordstrom President Erik Nordstrom flew in from the Seattle-based company’s headquarters to notify the downtown store’s
176 employees that the store would close on July 31.
IBJ was first to report the store's closing early Thursday morning.
In addition to its store at The Fashion Mall at Keystone Crossing, the upscale retailer will open its off-price Nordstrom
Rack store in September at the nearby Rivers Edge shopping center at 82nd Street and Dean Road.
Between the two stores, 97 jobs should be available to workers at the Circle Centre mall location, Nordstrom said. A severance
package will be available to employees who aren’t offered jobs but stay until the downtown store closes.
Sales have fallen by roughly half since the Keystone Crossing store opened, a decline company officials did not anticipate,
Nordstrom said.
“That really surprised us,” he said. “We have multiple stores in many markets.”
In addition, he said the downtown store is in need of a remodel, and the company wasn’t prepared to invest the money
in it given the disappointing sales. The lease for the 210,000-square-foot store, which opened in 1995, is up for renewal
this year.
Having a second Indianapolis Nordstrom was such a big concern for the mall developers back in the 1990s that they extracted
an unusual concession from the company: that it would wait at least five years before opening another Indianapolis-area store.
The city originally enticed Nordstrom to open in the $319 million mall by offering a new building and tenant improvements
at no upfront cost to the retailer. How much Nordstrom pays in rent is not spelled out in publicly available documents.
The downtown store opened well in terms of sales but couldn’t sustain momentum. Sales peaked in 1997, said Nordstrom,
noting that convention visitors who shop at Circle Centre aren't picking up enough of the slack for downtown residents
and workers.
The Keystone Crossing store is performing much better, Nordstrom said.
“Given the mass of retail in that Keystone/Castleton area, there’s just a lot more retail there,” he said.
“We do better when there’s a lot of retail around us.”
Nordstrom said the downtown store’s closing is an isolated decision and not part of any larger plan to shut other locations.
“It’s very rare for us to close a store,” he said.
The official decision to shut the Circle Centre store wasn’t made until about a week ago, Nordstrom said.
Founded in 1901, Nordstrom has 214 stores in 29 states.
Its only Indiana stores are in Indianapolis.
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Nordstrom: Weak sales prompting closure of Circle Centre store
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In my opinion the estridge companies are crooks. They filed bankruptcy on their 'track housing' side of the business two weeks before they closed on one of my clients' homes. When my client first interviewed Estridge as a builder 6 months before, they specifically ASKED about the solvency of their business, knowing that some builders were struggling. Estridge truly misrepresented their financial situation at that time. I suppose I am more unhappy with the whole system than I am with the builder because what the heck==you can file bankruptcy on 'track homes' but still keep building and make money off of 'custom built' homes??? How ridiculous! They are all homes. How can a company be allowed to bilk thousands of dollars from their subcontractors but still be allowed to build houses?? they should have been made to pay back all their unpaid contractors before being allowed to profit from building any more houses! This alone makes them and the system crooks in my eyes. I would never build an estridge home and I would not recommend for my clients either. If they were truly 'bankrupt' how could they afford to keep building homes anyway??? The whole system needs fixed.
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I live a couple blocks east of the Angie's campus and my house is assessed for ~$160,000. If I could get that amount, let alone $384,000 (a 140% bonus), I'd sell in a minute. Either Angie's stockholders just got fleeced, or Angie's is getting about a 58% discount on their property taxes, if these properties are actually worth what they paid Mr. Oesterle for them. Which do you think is the case?
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Perhaps the IMA board is really to blame! They agreed to hire Charles. They can't seemingly find donors among themselves, or bring in new blood that will support the museums operating budget with an expanded museum and money to provide curators with something to do (ie buy art). The headlines of disarray at the museum and mass firings are hurting the reputation of the museum for some time to come. If people on the board had misgivings, perhaps they shpuld have more forcefully opposed efforts that they have seemingly been unable to fund, like expansion and the costs it has created!
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See, I told u Indyman and Dipsicle....this 8 days is overkill. It's barely worth a weekend....great job Tony George! Your dream has been fulfilled....he fans want the I r l back. Thats how good it was.....and that sucked.
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I have been in training for a short time now but right off I can see that safety and quality are the number one issues, my experience as of late has been a positive one, the employees along with Jeff the plant manager and the operation supervisor as well as the engineers are a highly motivated group of people, what an asset for the area to have and for company's in need of a quality metal products.
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Hey howz bout a Gigantic Goodwill Store...sounds really classy huh?
Amazing how great stores cease to exist when the almighty dollar exacts elsewhere? Or does it?
Guraranteed when the prices are slashed gettin near closing time....you;ll see many coming on down once again!!!! Oh the excuse of dee poor ole ecomony...right right the mascara snake fast and bulbous...tight too!
Poor whiny Hoosiers who hate retail only when the cheapies are ripe for pickins full throttle!
Long live Tescos!
It is hard to blame Simon too. Keystone needed an anchor store too. Simon likely knew the result but had to make a very difficult decision, ensure the health of an extremely successful mall, or help maintain the image of a thriving downtown and keep a high value tenant in a spot that was not yielding the tenant projected results. Tough spot to be in probably.
Now the downtown mall is unanchored on one side, which is bad for all the smaller tenants. I'm sure Simon has a short list of anchors to go to, but Nordstrom was pretty prestigous
I don't even know where to begin...parking? safety? "causcasisn (note spelling) people living" downtown?
Are we even talking about the same downtown? First off, most of the ridiculous comments posted offer no rational viewpoint as to why Nordstorm closed. Second, if you are someone that thinks parking and safety are major concerns in downtown Indy, then any urban environment is no place for you. You and the City are better off without each other.
Yes, everyone should've expected that the northside Nordstrom would lead to the closing of the downtown store, but is that the fault of City leaders? Did the City grant any incentives in connection with the opening of the northside store? If not, how do you blame them for Nordstrom's decision?
If you want to talk about policing the mall area and other such issues, that's a different story, but once the northside store opened, this news was only a matter of time.
Anyone, including city leaders, who is involved in negotiating retail contracts can't afford to be naive about how opening a north store could effect the health of a downtown store. If they are anything less than a retail contract expert with the health of the city center at heart, they should not be negotiating retail contracts.
I agree that they should close the north store and keep the downtown store but that won't happen, so we now need to look for new anchors. It must NOT be something as ubiquitous as Target; it must be something that visitors don't have in their town/city and preferably something that is unique to Indianapolis shoppers as well. IKEA sounds good to me.
Let this be a learning opportunity for the city in regard to the expertise required in negotiating contracts and in the feeling of safety required by potential shoppers. Yes, the downtown MUST have more on-foot policing. Parking, in my view, is not an issue of concern, as it is already incredibly cheap, available and accessible.
Everyone is worried about the Superbowl. Don't. Worry about the convention business. We just lost a huge anchor store at a Simon mall. It is a store that many places in the country do not have, so it was a natural draw to conventioneers. It needs replaced quickly with another high quality anchor. Classic mall design demands this for it to be an effective shopping space.
It is not excusable for this to have been a surprise on the community. It is not excusable it will happen six months before a potential Superbowl. It is poor city management.
The Circle Centre Mall jewel is tarnished, but is not beyond polishing. Things change, and if they don't change, they need to change, or face failure. Like it or not, here's a chance for change.
There are bigger issues. PC or not, the aforementioned IBE events clear out downtown of serious shoppers and spenders for weeks at a time, and the bad vibe continues as young punks and creepy beggars scare away suburbanites on weekend nights. In many big cities, residents and visitors take it all in, with varying degrees, as part of the urban fabric. Indy is really not all that urban.
Circle Centre Mall remains, for the most part, a downtown success, but this is an odd case where part of the price of success -- is failure.
I hope for the best, but cannot imagine what single entity would take over that huge space, dream as you may about putting in a Target, Trader Joe's, or IKEA -- ain't happening.
Who'd spend the money? Too late for a casino. Despite touting downtown as a place for tourists and conventioneers, some city fathers and mothers opted to put the casinos in the sticks. I will never, ever, understand that one. Bart Peterson hit the nail on the head when he wanted to pay for Lucas Oil with a downtown casino. Anyone want to rethink that now?
Another option, if there's money and motivation to do so, is move those aging movie theatres on the white elephant fourth floor to the street, and add screens that show indy films, something that might attract urbanites. Just a thought.
And people, don't get in a tizzy about how embarassing it will be for Super Bowl visitors. Whatever's done, please don't try and gloss over an empty storefront with something temporary, like downtown Detroit did when they hosted the Super Bowl. That only screams desperation, and I don't think we're that desperate.
Downtown needs more density and we need to attract MUCH better conventions, then maybe higher end retail will come back.
Parking in an urban, downtown core will never be free! And it is certainly cheaper here than in other cities!
If you want free parking in front of the door, that's fine, stay in the suburbs... but quit saying that parking in downtown needs to be free or cheaper! Spots need to turnover so that others visiting or shopping can find parking... and not see your car sitting there for 8 hours of the day. And actually, parking is abundunt in our downtown, you just have to look for it and/or be willing to walk more than 10 feet from your car to your destination.
one thing downtown does need is a target/walmart, etc. we dont have any stores like that. i dont want to take anything away from family owned places downtown, they are great alone mass ave...but to get to a superstore takes like a 15 min drive. nordstrom is just the tipping point, you'll see the same w other stores soon. untill the city and our 'leaders' wake up and start doing things to make the city attractive instead of doing everything for monetary purposes to force people to not come downtown nothing will change. and to make it a better place, WE HAVE TO DO SOMETHING ABOUT THE THUGS!!!
I vote for a Super Target.