Mendenhall Mall manager has big vacancy to fill
Bauer wants 'quality clothing store' to replace Gottschalks
Department store Gottschalks is bankrupt and will close its doors in a week. Mendenhall Mall manager Larry Bauer is about to have a 36,400-square-foot hole to fill.
"The ideal category would be something similar to Gottschalks, like a Kohl's, an Old Navy, a Burlington Coat Factory," Bauer said. "I think that what the community would really like to keep is a quality clothing store here."
Second choice, he said, might be an outdoor-equipment retailer like REI.
Any bites? Bauer said he wasn't ready to share that information yet.
Bauer manages the mall property for Salmon Creek LLC, a partnership of five owners in Western states that bought it in 2007. They don't own the entire mall; the land underneath it and some of the structures are owned by Glacier Village Supermarket, aka Super Bear.
Fresno-based Gottschalks moved there from a smaller spot in the Nugget Mall in 2002. Before that, the space held a J.C. Penney department store.
Bauer hired a Seattle-area firm to assemble a portfolio to help market the spot, and the firm sent someone down to Las Vegas last week to network at a conference of shopping-mall businesses.
"We have not found anything yet," Bauer said. "But we're really actively looking."
He's trying to sell stores that usually look to set up in big cities.
"They want to have anywhere between 100,000 and 200,000 people in a five-mile radius. And that doesn't happen in Juneau," Bauer said.
Another possible disadvantage: the cost of getting merchandise here.
But Bauer also points out Juneau's advantages. The customer population, for example, should be seen as beyond the 30,000-plus in city limits, since people come from other parts of Southeast to shop at places like Costco. And while current and prior tenants Gottschalks and J.C. Penney went bankrupt, it wasn't because of their Juneau locations, he said. Those were profitable.
Illinois-based Kohl's Inc. in April opened a store in Anchorage, along with 10 others nationwide.
• Contact reporter Kate Golden at 523-2276 or kate.golden@juneauempire.com.