The Carson’s department store in Columbus’ FairOaks Mall, one of the original anchor tenants in 1990, will shut its doors for the final time on Sunday.
The closing date was confirmed by store manager Ron Hite, who declined to provide more details. At the end of January, when parent company Bon-Ton Stores announced the Columbus store would close, it had 38 employees.
The Columbus Carson’s was among 47 locations targeted earlier to close nationwide this year. But Bon-Ton, which operates 260 department stores in the U.S., was in bankruptcy court last week and is now expected to go out of business.
Carson’s originally operated as Elder-Beerman in Columbus until the store’s name changed six years ago.
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The mall’s interior entrance to the Columbus Carson’s is already closed off. Customers wanting to take advantage of store-closing prices of 70 to 90 percent off can only get in and out through the exterior entrance nearest to 25th Street.
All remaining merchandise, which includes cosmetics, bedding and clothing, has been moved to the south side of the store near the remaining entrance.
Two other anchor stores, Kmart and JCPenney, departed the mall in recent years — Kmart in 2014 and Penney last year. The closings are viewed as part of a national trend toward online purchasing has negatively impacted brick-and-mortar retailers across the country.
About 20 percent of consumer purchases are now made digitally, said Cindy Frey, Columbus Area Chamber of Commerce president, earlier this year.
The Edinburgh Outlet Mall has also drawn customers away from FairOaks, said Mark Pratt, president of Breeden Inc., Columbus, a specialist in commercial real estate. Pratt made that observation just after Carson’s original announcement in late January.
While many malls in larger cities and college towns still draw large numbers of customers, enclosed shopping centers in medium-sized communities such as Columbus are among those suffering the most, said Kim Showalter, FairOaks general manager.
A smaller FairOaks Mall retailer, Nite Life Boutique, located near the mall entrance to Carson’s, is likely to close in a matter of weeks, owner Cheryl Stuck said.
Nite Life, which opened in 2010 and currently has four regular employees, sells adult lingerie and other romance-themed items.
Stuck also operated the J. Nicole women’s clothing store at FairOaks for three years before closing it last June and reopening a few weeks later in Louisville’s Mall St. Matthews.
If she is unable to find an investor to buy Nite Life, Stuck said her boutique will likely follow the same path as J. Nicole and be relocated to Louisville, where she lives.
Showalter said she is having conversations with as many as three potential mall tenants. She did not disclose, however, how many of the interested parties are retailers, as opposed to unconventional mall tenants such Cummins Inc. or Harlequin Theatre.
“Right now, everybody is looking at how you can offer a mixture,” Showalter said. “You have to think outside the box, and come up with different options and uses.”
But mixing uses in a mall doesn’t generate the foot traffic that many retailers require, Pratt said in January.
The closing of both Carson’s and Nite Life would leave 17 remaining retail tenants at FairOaks, according an online store listing. The 415,000-square-foot mall was designed to provide 55 storefront offerings.
Before she decided to open two stores in the Columbus mall, Stuck said she had done extensive research on whether Bartholomew County was a viable market in terms of both population and household income.
“Columbus remains a viable possibility for business,” Stuck said. “But the people who live there feel a need to drive long distances when they go shopping.”
The Louisville businesswoman is referring to a decades-old complaint from local retailers that many shoppers prefer traveling to Indianapolis area retail complexes, such as the Greenwood Park Mall on the south side or Castleton Square Mall on the north side. There’s a perception that they will find a substantially larger and diverse selection of items, she said.
“Why waste all that gas?” Struck asked. “They should shop local first, and only travel to the big cities when they can’t find what they are looking for.”
Regarding online purchases, a lot of shoppers prefer to first examine merchandise before paying for it, Struck said.
People who buy online and have a negative experience are likely to return to brick-and-mortar stores, she said.
Although the loss of a mall tenant receives a lot of public attention, Showalter said FairOaks also has its share of success stories such as the growth of Special Dogs & More, which began serving gourmet hot dogs, ribbon fries and other food items in October.
Two other highly successful FairOaks stores are Creative Eyes, which provides eyebrow threading and facial hair removal, and Dunham’s Sports, which sells items related to sports, fitness and outdoor activities, she said.
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1990: FairOaks Mall premieres on a 34-acres parcel that formerly served as the Bartholomew County Fairgrounds. When it opened in August, the mall boasted better than a 60 percent occupancy rate. The original mall owners were the Southfield, Mich.-based Schostak Brothers & Co.
1992: In addition to anchor stores Elder-Beerman, JCPenney and Kmart, FairOaks announced it had more than 35 restaurants and specialty shops.
2003: The property is sold to New Jersey-based Fair Oaks Mall Acquisition LLC for an undisclosed sum.
2009: The Goody’s department store chain files for bankruptcy in 2009 and closes its stores, including the FairOaks location. Cummins Inc. would later lease the space.
2013: After the mall goes into foreclosure, an entity known as Columbus Noteholder LLC bought the mortgage and took over rights to collect rent from existing leases. The investment group is associated with GJ Realty, a company with offices on West 37th Street in Manhattan, New York
2014: Within two weeks, Sears Holdings Corp. makes separate announcements in January that it will close both the Kmart at FairOaks and the Sears store in downtown Columbus.
2015: New anchor tenant Dunham’s Sports opens in the space vacated by Kmart.
2017: Anchor tenant JCPenney closes in late July.
2018: Carson’s announces it will close April 29. The department store operated as Elder-Beerman, also a Bon-Ton Stores brand, until changing its name six years ago.
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