Retail Roundup: Bob's Stores to close one Long Island location
A Bob's Stores location in the Gateway Plaza shopping center in Patchogue is slated to close. Credit: Newsday/Tory N. Parish
A Bob’s Stores location in Patchogue is closing but the discount clothing chain’s other two local stores that were slated to close under bankruptcy last year are still open.
No one is saying why, at least not publicly.
The store in Patchogue is in leased space at 499 Sunrise Hwy. in the Gateway Plaza shopping center.
Signs in the window and outside the store say, “Store closing. This location only.”
An employee at the store Wednesday said the workers didn’t know when the store would be closing.
You might remember that Meriden, Connecticut-based Eastern Outfitters LLC, the former parent company of the Bob’s Stores and Eastern Mountain Sports chains, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection last year.
At that time, February 2017, there were 86 Eastern Outfitters and Bob’s Stores with 2,600 employees in the Northeast.
In April 2017, the Delaware Bankruptcy Court approved Sports Direct International PLC, a British retail group, acquiring some of Eastern Outfitters’ assets, including 49 Bob’s Stores and Eastern Mountain, for $101 million.
The court also approved Eastern Outfitters’ expedited plan to close 48 stores, including four Long Island locations — three Bob’s Stores in East Northport, Selden and West Islip and one Eastern Mountain Sports in Carle Place.
Some of the stores slated for closure were kept open.
At this point, the Bob’s Stores in East Northport and the Eastern Mountain Sports in Carle Place were closed, but the two Bob’s Stores in Selden and West Islip are still open.
The Bob’s Stores location in Patchogue was not on the list of 48 planned closings in the bankruptcy documents.
The store occupies 51,537 square feet of space in Gateway Plaza, according to the website of Pergament Properties, the Woodbury-based real estate firm marketing the property.
Patchogue Realty Associates, the landlord for the shopping center, has the same address as Pergament. Neither returned calls inquiring about the Patchogue store’s closing or plans for the Selden and East Islip locations.
Sports Direct did not respond to email inquiries about the closing.
Retail Roundup is a column about major retail news on Long Island — store openings, closings, expansions, acquisitions, etc. — that is published online and in the Monday paper. To read more of these columns, click here. If you have news to share, please send an email to Newsday reporter Tory N. Parrish at tory.parrish@newsday.com.
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.
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