JC Penney, Nordstrom Rack headed for Willow Grove
A new JC Penney and Nordstrom Rack are centerpieces of a planned expansion announced Thursday at the site of an old Strawbridge's department store at Willow Grove Mall.
A new JC Penney and Nordstrom Rack are centerpieces of a planned expansion announced Thursday at the site of an old Strawbridge's department store at Willow Grove Mall.
The stores, set to open in 2012, will be part of 190,000 square feet of renovated space reconfigured from the shell of an old, three-story Strawbridge's, said mall owner Pennsylvania Real Estate Investment Trust.
The stores are being slotted into a long-dormant department store that was to have originally come back to life as a Boscov's. But that retailer's plunge into bankruptcy in 2008 put a stop on thoughts of expansion, and its Willow Grove store plans had been eliminated by the time it emerged from Chapter 11.
A Cheesecake Factory already opened inside part of the old Strawbridge's, and PREIT officials say they expect several smaller retail stores to open there later this year as part of the $11.7 million capital improvement project.
"We just signed the deals, literally, last night with JC Penney and Nordstrom Rack," Joseph Coradino, who oversees leasing as president of PREIT Services, L.L.C. and PREIT RUBIN, Inc., said on Thursday.
President and chief operating officer Ed Glickman called the project a "great solution" for the undone Boscov's deal - one that "will pump a lot of life into Willow Grove, which is great for us and great for the shoppers in that area."
The Philadelphia-based company's announcement coincided with release of earnings that showed an $18.2 million net earnings loss and $19 million in funds from operations for the quarter that ended June 30.
The earnings were hurt by depreciation but also by troubles at the Borders books chain, which recently announced it was closing its stores. Glickman said the company recorded $71 million in depreciation of assets during the first six months of the year.
On the whole, tenant occupancy during the last quarter was stable at PREIT's 38 shopping malls and eight shopping centers: Just under 91 percent at malls and about 90 percent at shopping centers, roughly in line with the same period a year earlier.
Coradino said the Strawbridge's renovation promised to help boost sales and rental rates at Willow Grove. Before Strawbridge's closed, the mall boasted sales of more than $460 per square foot, he said. That number fell when one of the mall's anchor stores went dormant.
The addition of Penney's and Nordstrom Rack, he said, would place Willow Grove in the company of competitor King of Prussia Mall and the jewel of PREIT's own holdings, Cherry Hill Mall, which recently underwent a $200 million renovation.
Contact Maria Panaritis at 215-854-2431 or mpanaritis@phillynews.com or on Twitter, @panaritism.