Say Goodbye to Macy's
Macy’s Closing: What Next for Missoula?
As word spreads that its largest downtown retailer will close, Missoula looks for a business to fill the void.By Amy Linn, 1-05-10
Photo by Amy Linn
Macy’s Inc. announced this morning that it will be closing its Missoula store, an economic and historic touchstone for the downtown district. The brick building at the corner of Higgins and Front Street, a landmark for more than a century, will close as part of a corporate “pruning” that includes shutting down four other under-performing stores nationwide, including one in downtown Boise, Idaho.
Preliminary reports say the Missoula store, which has 55 employees, will close in two months. The other closures involve stores in Michigan, Missouri and New Jersey, affecting 307 employees total, Macy’s said.
Missoula Mayor John Engen, who expressed sadness about the news, said the city nevertheless has strategies and people in place to keep the downtown area vital and thriving. He noted there have been rumors for years about a Macy’s departure, so downtown retailers have been somewhat prepared.
“I’m not downplaying the blow to employees, but we have a bunch of plans in place that soften the blow considerably,” Engen said. “We’re sad, but that doesn’t stop us from moving ahead.”
Among the steps taken today, Engen asked Macy’s for “a realistic ballpark asking price for the property.”
Dick King, president of the Missoula Area Economic Development Corporation, said he spoke today with one potential buyer, a high-tech company that has been looking for property downtown. The Macy’s building is historically significant and a prime piece of real estate, King noted. “It’s a good investment for somebody—and if it’s not [used for] retail, that might not be a negative.”
Macy’s employees, meanwhile, said they’d been told not to speak to reporters. But the mood inside the store was noticeably grim. In between waiting, politely as ever, on customers, salespeople on one floor talked to each other about the decades they’d worked at the store, and tried to imagine their future without it.
Missoula is also trying to imagine it. The Macy’s building has been a centerpiece of local commerce—and a regional powerhouse—for most of the 20th century. Originally constructed in the 1880s, the structure was first home to Missoula Mercantile Co., one of the largest businesses of its kind between Minneapolis and Seattle. Under changing ownership, the Mercantile became The Bon Marché in the 1970s and Macy’s in 2005.
Its future has been a familiar source of worry.
“I’ve been head of the Missoula Downtown Association for 10 years, and I’ve heard rumors about Macy’s closing for every one of them,” said Linda McCarthy, executive director of the MDA. “We’re obviously disappointed and sad,” McCarthy added. But the closure does not reflect the general economic reality downtown, she said. “We’ve had more stores open downtown in the last two years than close.”
Still, the importance of Macy’s or a department store on the site cannot be downplayed. Generations of Missoula residents have shopped there, from Mercantile days to the present, lending it value as a symbol of stability. In addition, Macy’s was a key player in the city’s downtown master plan—and seen as a critical retail “anchor” to stabilize the downtown economy and attract a steady flow of consumers.
News about the closure has the added misfortune of arriving amid the shut-down of the Smurfit-Stone plant in Frenchtown. The state’s economic picture is not expected to get rosier any time soon.
“We expect 2010 to be the third consecutive year of decline for Montana,” said Patrick Barkey, director of the Bureau of Business and Economic Research at the University of Montana.
With continued job layoffs in the backdrop, consumers aren’t spending as much, and they’re shopping in discount box stores. “People are being more careful with their money, especially families,” as King put it. “Retail depends on people having incomes.”
The key for Missoula, said King, is to “keep an open mind” and consider all options, including one that doesn’t involve retail for the Macy’s building.
“In adversity, there is opportunity,” King said. “And if we pull together—really pull together—we can really turn these negative things into positives.”
This story has been updated.
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just like all the talk after stimson left bonner. shish boom bahhhhh!
why can't missoula get some new blood in those positions? downtown missoula cannot afford to sit back and let mediocre leadership continue to gloss things over. we need fresh faces and new ideas and people willing to roll up the sleeves and do the hard work that it takes to face this shitstorm squarely!
As for the situation. I hope a high tech place doesn't go there. I think something that keeps it a public space would be the way to preserve and further energize downtown. This is an opportunity to keep it LOCAL. My dream would be to see it as a multi-use civic center , with areas for performances and arts, space for retail and food.. like a mall but with the public-use potential of Caras Park. I wish we could use the stimulus money that put those benches downtown toward a project like this.
One lesson we should all be learning right now is that huge, out of state corporations simply cant and wont prioritize things like keeping our downtown vital. Put something useful and exciting in there that cares about Missoula and Montana, and it will give our community a reason to care about downtown.
As far as my comments go- I used to belong to mda and got very little benefit from it as a small business
And king made a lot of "noise" and PR announcements about the bonner sawmill that were never followed through.
I think they are both a little too complacent to be very helpful.
Anyway, just passing this on.
i emphatically disagree that more of the same old comfortable club of your players is the answer here. it is the same old club that failed bonner when the mill closed down. i am not as easily impressed as you are with stale ideas and meaningless boosterism that disappears as soon as the grant money dries up.
I agree with you that stale ideas and meaningless boosterism alone are not an adequate response to the situation. If that is all we get, I will join your criticism of the response. For now, I am willing to see what the Mayor, MRA, OPG and the rest of the City come up with. They alone cannot do the job, though--most of the heavy lifting addressing Macy's departure will be done by the private sector--as it should, in my opinion. To the degree that the municipality is able to forge a beneficial partnership with the private interests who will end up turning this situation around, they will be judged by all of us.
I hope you will share your constructive ideas and observations as this unfolds. It seems, like me, you love Missoula and want good things for our community.