Women's clothing chain Mandee to close another LI store 

Trendy women’s clothing retailer Mandee has closed several Long Island stores over the past several years, and at least one more is about to shut down.

The Mandee in Levittown will be closing soon while a store in Centereach is in a space being marketed as vacant.

The store in Levittown Mews Shopping Center will close on or before Feb. 28, said Robert Delavale, vice president and director of leasing at Breslin Realty Development Corp., the Garden City company that owns the shopping center.

Going-out-of-business-sale signs are posted in the windows of the Levittown store, which is at 3371-3373 Hempstead Tpke.

The store opened in or around March 2010 and occupies about 7,000 square feet, said Delavale, who said he was unsure of the reason for the closing.

"We monitor their sales. The sales are pretty strong in that location," he said.

In 2011, there were 17 Mandee stores on Long Island, but now there are five, including those in Centereach, Oceanside, Port Jefferson Station and Shirley. Employees at those stores and the landlords for most of the shops said last week that the locations would not be closing.

But Ripco Real Estate Corp., which is managing leasing for Centereach Square, shows the Mandee space on its website as available in the shopping center.

"It is still open but we are marketing the space," said Daniel Glazer, a vice president in the Jericho office of Ripco.

Centereach Square is owned by a Seattle-based company, Bridge33 Capital LLC, which did not respond to Newsday’s requests for comment.

Bridge33’s online map of Centereach Square shows the Mandee space as vacant.

Mandee’s Toronto-based parent company, YM Inc., did not respond to Newsday’s requests for comment.

YM also owns the women’s clothing chain Charlotte Russe and several other clothing chains, but the Mandee brand is not listed on YM’s website.

Big M Inc., which was a Totowa, New Jersey-based company that owned the Mandee and Annie Sez clothing chains, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in January 2013, when it had 129 stores in eight states, including 84 Mandee stores.

YM bought Big M for $22.5 million in bankruptcy court in May 2013.

By Tory N. Parrish

tory.parrish@newsday.comToryParrish1

Tory N. Parrish covers retail and small business for Newsday. She has worked at the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review and Observer-Dispatch in Utica, N.Y.