Beleaguered bookseller Borders Group Inc. is closing its Michigan Avenue location, saying the store has fallen short of its profit goals.
The Ann Arbor, Mich.-based retailer announced Thursday that the store, at 830 N. Michigan Ave., will close in January 2010.
“It’s a difficult decision to close a store, and we’ve done all that we can to keep this location open,” Steve Davis, a Borders senior vice-president, says in a press release. “This store has not met our profit objectives for some time now. In today’s economy, no retailer can afford to operate stores that do not produce the kind of results required to sustain a location.”
The three-level, 49,881-square-foot store opened in 1995, and its lease expires in February 2010, a spokeswoman says. She wouldn’t disclose whether the store was losing money or how long it had been underperforming.
The retailer has 19 other Chicago-area locations and has no plans to close additional stores here, she says. The company, however, is still looking to sublease five area locations, which would close if Borders found tenants: two in Lincoln Park, one in Uptown, one in Hyde Park and one in Evanston.
Related story: Borders may close four Chicago stores
Closing the Michigan Avenue store will affect about 100 employees, the company says, and means there will be more empty retail space on the Magnificent Mile than there has been in years. The McCormick Foundation recently announced it would close its Freedom Museum at 445 N. Michigan Ave., and the building’s owner, Tribune Co., is now marketing the roughly 10,000-square-foot space to retailers.
A representative of the 830 N. Michigan owner, the British Broadcasting Corp.’s retirement fund, didn’t return a call seeking comment.
The retailer has closed five Borders stores nationwide in recent months, and still has more than 1,000 locations worldwide including Borders and Waldenbooks. Borders has been grappling with turnaround efforts for three years and earlier this month laid off 136 of its headquarters staff.
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