October, 2006 - Labelscar: The Retail History Blog

Kohl’s Opening 65 Stores in 30 States

On October 5, 2006, Kohl’s Department Stores embarked on the largest grand opening in its history, opening 65 stores in 30 states.

At an analysts’ convention in Tampa, they also revealed future plans for expansion. Currently, Kohls has about 820 stores in 45 states; however, they plan to open 115 stores next year, and about 270 more between 2007 and 2010. Their same-store sales were up 16.3 percent from the same time in 2005, and September 2006 total sales rose 26.1 percent.

The linear growth model of Kohl’s reads more like a log function than anything else. Coming from suburban Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Kohl’s has grown by leaps and bounds to be as successful as it is today. But why? I offer up a few suggestions. The first is that Kohl’s was opportunistic and came up at the right place in the right time. Kohl’s Department Stores began in 1962 under the helm of Max Kohl, a grocer in the Milwaukee area since 1946 who operated Kohl’s food stores. In 1972, the British-American Tobacco Company (BATUS) purchased both Kohl’s grocery and department stores, yet the Kohl family stayed on to administrate the stores until 1979 when they left altogether. Interestingly, Max Kohl’s son Herb is now the senior United States Senator from Wisconsin.

Through the 1970s and early 1980s, Kohl’s grocery and food stores operated in tandem and were often physically adjacent in shopping centers throughout southeastern Wisconsin. At many locations, the stores also shared an entrance and customers could choose whether they wanted groceries or a department store by turning left or right once inside. The stores were, however, physically separated by a barrier and only the front entrance atrium was common to both.

In 1983, the grocery store division of Kohl’s was sold to A&P, who continued to operate and even open new locations until they all closed in 2003. BATUS continued to operate Kohl’s department stores until 1986, when they were sold to a group of independent investors who continues to operate the stores today.

Expansion came slow for Kohl’s at first, but once it began it rose exponentially. Until the mid 1980s there were less than 40 stores in Wisconsin, Illinois, and Indiana. Also in the mid-1980s, Kohl’s took over a struggling similar chain called Main Street Stores in the Chicagoland area, and they opened their store in my hometown of Janesville, Wisconsin in 1986, in a former Montgomery Ward location in the Janesville Mall.

Since the 80s, Kohl’s has expanded where other chains have failed, pairing its excellent customer service reputation with high quality, often name brand merchandise at discounted prices. Kohl’s made a niche market for itself in between discounters such as Target, Wal-Mart, and K-Mart, and full-line department stores like Macy’s, Dillard’s, and JCPenney. As Kohl’s focuses heavily on softline merchandise and very little on electronics (aside from small appliances and gadgets, Kohl’s abandoned its full electronics department in 1994) it is very popular with women. They’ve used other chain failures such as Clover, Ames, Caldor, and Bradlees in the northeast to swoop in and open stores there to expand their concept over the past 9 years. If Kohl’s continues on their track to 1,200 stores by 2010 they will be one of the most successful chains in history.

Chapel Hills Mall; Colorado Springs, Colorado

With a 2005 estimated population of 520,000 people sitting at over 6,000 feet above sea level, metro Colorado Springs is a bustling economy. Mainly known for Pike’s Peak, the Red Rocks area, and numerous military installations, the city grew over 30 percent in the 1990s. Much of this growth was sprawl, in the way of strip malls, apartment complexes, and housing subdivisions as far as the eye can see. Two malls dominate Colorado Springs, and both are mid-tier in terms of the type of stores. You won’t find a Nordstrom or too many expensive boutique offerings in Colorado Springs because people drive about an hour or so north to the Denver area for that. The two major malls in Colorado Springs are The Citadel, located just east of downtown along Academy Blvd, and Chapel Hills Mall, located north of downtown near I-25 and Academy Blvd.

Opening in 1982, Chapel Hills Mall is a two-level, super-regional enclosed mall located on the north side of Colorado Springs along Academy Boulevard just south of I-25. It is currently approximately 1.2 million square feet and has the capacity for 154 retail stores. Chapel Hills Mall is currently anchored by K-Mart, JCPenney, Sears, and Macy’s. For those of you who are counting, there are 5,754 parking spaces at Chapel Hills Mall. I counted them all. Just kidding, it was listed on the mall’s leasing website.

Chapel Hills Mall is owned and operated by General Growth Properties of Chicago, who built the mall in 1982. Over the years the mall has gone through two major renovations, in 1985 and 1998. The latter renovation was the most extensive, and it brought with it a large ice-skating rink which was very popular. However, Dick’s Sporting Goods began negotiations with General Growth in 2005 to open a store within the mall in the very same space which the ice-skating rink occupies, so away went the ice-skating rink in June 2006. The renovation in 1998 also brought a climbing wall, Borders Books, and a 15-screen theatre.

Other changes have been afoot at Chapel Hills Mall in terms of the anchor stores. In 2005, Mervyns was sold by Target Corp. and became its own independent parent company called Mervyns LLC. Due to a slump in sales, Mervyns LLC decided to lay off over 4,000 employees and close over 60 underperforming stores, focusing on western and southwestern markets. Unfortunately, this included most of the stores in Colorado, and the Chapel Hills store closed in January 2006. In addition to the Mervyns change, Foley’s became Macy’s in September 2006 when Macy’s created their national brand and converted all the May properties they bought to the Macy’s nameplate.

I visited Chapel Hills Mall for the first and only time in January 2005 and took the pictures featured here. Mervyn’s and Foley’s were still at the mall, as was the ice rink. So, there has been significant change in just under two years. However, the mall is still a super-regional draw and competes with Citadel Mall (and also to a lesser degree with Denver) for the Colorado Springs shopping dollar.

The Shoppes at Buckland Hills; Manchester, Connecticut

The Shoppes at Buckland Hills (Which was formerly known as the esoterically-named Pavilions at Buckland Hills until sometime… err, recently) is (Are? Damn you, subject-verb agreement!) one of the two major malls serving the immediate Hartford area. It’s the newest of the two by far, with the distinctively Taubman-styled–and far more interesting–Westfarms being the other, but it’s also the less upscale one. While the “Shoppes” is the cornerstone of one of the largest and newest retail districts in New England, it also faces a large amount of competition from the newly-completed Evergreen Walk lifestyle center in South Windsor, a super-fouffy faux-Main Street deal which houses nearly all of the truly upscale tenants for the area.

The 1 million square foot, two-level, 140 store mall opened in 1990 with Lord & Taylor, Sears, JCPenney, Dick’s Sporting Goods, and G. Fox as anchors. The May company acquired Filene’s in the mid-1990s and retired the storied G. Fox nameplate–a staple of Hartford for generations. This gave May two stores in the mall, and in 2004 they would shut the Lord & Taylor store and convert it to a second Filene’s location. Of course this wouldn’t last terribly long, given that both locations were converted to Macy’s in 2006. The Barnes & Noble store also opened in the mall in 2002 or so, as part of a minor renovation that also reconfigured the food court to be more open and airy.

I seriously caught these Filene’s signs just in time. These pictures were taken in early August 2006:

The opening of the Pavilions at Buckland Hills spurred a large amount of retail activity along I-84 in Manchester, just about 5 miles northeast of Hartford, and the build-out of this area continues today. Of course, given the mall’s vintage, it’s largely what you’d expect–and that’d be boring, in case you haven’t been paying attention. But like all malls, it does have a few interesting design features. The tent-like, canvas-roofed corridors are like few other malls (I can recall only three malls I’ve witnessed it in, though I’m sure there are more) and the semi-elaborate Victorian details and jaunty courts offer at least at a modicum of entertainment to a mall that, for the most part, is an awful lot like a slightly less-successful cousin of the Natick Mall outside of Boston.

The opening of the Evergreen Walk lifestyle thing seems to be hurting this beast somethin’ fierce, as there were quite a few vacancies (for a mall of this caliber and with such little competition, anyway) on our most recent visit, and we couldn’t help but notice that Buckland Hills is missing a lot of the most upscale tenants that normally frequent super-regional malls. Connecticut folks, give us some feedback–what’s going on here? How do people in the Nutmeg State feel about the Shoppes at Buckland Hills?

P.S.: We do know one little newsy tidbit–Boston record store mainstay Newbury Comics, my former employer and the largest independent record store chain in the United States, is planning to open a prototype store in the Shoppes at Buckland Hills sometime in the near future. It’ll be the chain’s first foray into Connecticut, filling the void left statewide by the demise of Media Play, and it comes at a time when record stores are in trouble. While Newbury has some mall locations, they tend to be somewhat accidental. Entering a whole new market in an enclosed mall carries a certain meaning for them as they’ll need to introduce themselves to the people of metro Hartford. Will it work?

The Fashion Center; Paramus, New Jersey

Given the considerable buzz generated by our other Paramus mall posts, we present another: the largely-defunct Fashion Center. The Fashion Center is in many ways a true cousin to Paramus Park, because it’s located on the same big parcel of land and is accessible from Paramus Park via internal roadways. Note the way that there’s parking up on the roof, too–how weird!

Fashion Center is much older, however, and at this point largely continues to exist as an outward-facing big box center. The 446,000 square foot enclosed mall originally opened on February 15, 1967 as the first fully-enclosed mall in Bergen County, and at the time was billed as a miniature, suburban, enclosed version of New York city’s Fifth Avenue, and sported upscale, fashion-oriented tenants. The mall was anchored by large Lord & Taylor and B. Altman stores which collectively accounted for the majority of the mall’s total square footage: the hallway between them housed only 15 other stores such as Brooks Brothers, F.A.O. Schwarz, and Ann Taylor. A Best & Company store was also located on a freestanding parcel in the outlots; today it’s a Toys ‘R Us. Check out this vintage photo of the mall’s B. Altman store over at MallsofAmerica. A more complete list of the Fashion Center’s historic tenants can be found on the mall’s Wikipedia page.

The defunct B. Altman store was replaced in the mid-1990s by a Bed, Bath, and Beyond and a TJMaxx, and by the early-mid 2000s the mall finally gave in to its much larger competition and began to convert to a big box format. The Fashion Center mall was closed in phases, and the center was converted to big box stores, including Best Buy. While neither of us have been recently to check it out, it sounds as though the corridors may still be open even though Lord & Taylor have closed their mall entrance.

I only visited this mall once, in 2000, and I remember being struck by how odd it was. There are vestiges of the center’s vintage, such as the strange curvaceous staircase and balcony in the center court, and bits and pieces of classic decor throughout the mall. It also seems that at one point it was given a very lackluster make-over that I would imagine is responsible for the building’s weird rec-room decor, and perhaps that’s when the distinctively strange putting-green carpeting was added. While I’ve seen small, upscale malls before (Boston’s own Mall at Chestnut Hill and Atrium Mall are excellent examples) but the relative shabbiness of Fashion Center, combined with its strange tenant roster, gave it a strangely forgotten feel.

Prangeway took this photo set in August 2001; obviously the place doesn’t look like this anymore! DeadMalls also has some more insight into the former and current condition of the mall.