Considering how much work went into this store (at least its exterior) during the 2007 remodel to split off the Babies R Us space, I have to imagine this store was pretty successful at that time -- after all, I'm not aware of very many Toys R Us stores to have gotten such an extensive exterior remodel at any point in their lives. So I have to wonder what happened between then and 2018 to make this one of the very first stores they closed during their bankruptcy. Perhaps the lease was expiring, or maybe it had just gotten extremely expensive -- this is prime real estate, after all, and I'm quite surprised whoever owns it hasn't done anything with it in the years since the store closed.
The Toys R Us closest to me didn't get a remodel, it just completely moved to a new location in around 2009-2010 or so. TRU had an old 1980s location just east of Willowbrook Mall on the other side of the train tracks, but then they moved to what is more or less a mall outparcel. The spot they moved to is arguably a better spot, but an argument could be made that it wasn't a better spot. There was some talk about the railroad doing something to the rail line and that potentially disrupting the TRU, but here over a decade later, nothing has happened to the rail line. In fact, the old TRU became a Big Lots and obviously that has out-survived the new TRU. The new TRU is slated to become a Best Buy Outlet store as the Best Buy Outlet across the street is now deemed to be too small.
ReplyDeleteWhen Kmart filed for bankruptcy in around 2002, it seemed that Kmart dumped a lot of their newer locations before their older ones. Here in Houston especially, Kmart had a lot of newer locations since they took over Venture's old stores...most of which were only a few years old at the time. Kmart left Houston completely during that bankruptcy, but that also meant they closed newer locations. I suspect, but I don't know, that perhaps one thing they did during bankruptcy was to get out from under debt related to those newer locations. Perhaps TRU had the same problem, but perhaps in this case it was remodel debt. It's hard to say.
Hmm, that is an interesting theory! With most companies, I would be surprised for them to still have debt from a remodel all that time later, but Toys R Us obviously had some major financial issues, so that seems plausible for them.
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