Credit: Mike Kalasnik
Staff at the J.C. Penney store at the Oxford Valley Mall in Middletown has received word that their store will remain open while 138 of the company’s other locations will close.
The department store chain confirmed Friday morning that the Oxford Valley Mall location will stay open. Nearby, the Philadelphia Mills (Franklin Mills), King of Prussia and Willow Grove stores will close by early summer.
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Along with closing 138 stores, layoffs and early retirement packages, J.C. Penney will close one supply chain facility in Lakeland, Florida, and relocate a California supply center to an existing store, a company statement said.
The closings come as the company looks to profitability for the future in the face of declining profits for large department store chains.
Earlier this month, MorningStar Credit Ratings put the Oxford Valley Store on a list of stores in danger of closing. The store was marked as needing either significant capital investment or facing lower-than-average sales.
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According to the credit rating agency, the J.C. Penney store in the Oxford Valley Mall has an average sales rate of $332 per square foot, among the lowest of the 39 malls identified by MorningStar. In addition, the store’s lease with the mall ends in August 2018.
The news that the store is staying open is good for the mall, which currently has three of its four anchor locations filled. The other anchor stores are Macy’s and Sears, both of which have been consolidating their footprint nationwide. The former Strawbridge’s at the mall was converted to a Boscov’s department store in 2006 and closed two years later due to a restructuring of the Berks County-based retailer. The former Boscov’s location has sat empty in the mall since that time.
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The Oxford Valley Mall J.C.Penney is one of the largest in the area and employs dozens of people in full- and part-time positions.
The closing stores will begin their liquidation starting April 17.
