Department Store

Perhaps no single brand had a holiday season quite as rocky as Sears. When the retailer announced a string of bad news on Jan. 9, shares of Sears Holding Corp. (which includes both Sears and Kmart) went through the floor. Holiday sales at Sears stores were down 9.2% in the nine weeks prior to Jan. 6, a brutal figure when you consider that overall retail sales were up slightly over the holidays (which I’ll discuss more in my next column).

In anticipation of Super Bowl XLVIII, Macy’s has opened an exclusive NFL Shop at Super Bowl on the fourth floor of its flagship Herald Square in New York City. Macy’s will keep the 36,000-sq.-ft. space open through Tuesday, Feb. 4.

Seattle – Nordstrom plans to open a Nordstrom Rack store at Harbison Court in Columbia, S.C., and another at West Towne Crossing in West Towne, Wis. The approximately 34,000-sq.-ft. Columbia store and 30,750-sq.-ft. West Towne store are both scheduled to open in fall 2014.

When it opens, the Harbison Court Nordstrom Rack will be the company's second location in South Carolina, following the recently announced location in Greenville that will also open in fall 2014.

York, Pa. – The Bon-Ton Stores, Inc. has reached an agreement with the city of Milwaukee to extend the lease for its Boston Store location in The Shops of Grand Avenue, Milwaukee, contingent upon the city providing financial contributions from its downtown Tax Increment Financing district.

Nordstrom plans to open its third fulfillment center at Conewago Industrial Park in Elizabethtown, Pa., in summer 2015. The approximately 672,000-sq.-ft. building, with an additional 470,000-sq.-ft. mezzanine, will enable faster delivery for Nordstrom.com, Nordstrom mobile app and Nordstrom catalog orders.

New York – Macy’s opened the exclusive NFL Shop at Super Bowl on the fourth floor of its flagship Herald Square in New York City on Sunday, Jan. 19. Macy’s will keep the 36,000-sq.-ft. space open through Tuesday, Feb. 4.

The back and forth between Jos. A. Banks and Men’s Wearhouse continues. This time the shoe is on Jos. A. Banks’ foot, as the company’s board of directors officially rejected an unsolicited buyout offer from the Men’s Wearhouse.

Jos. A. Bank called the offer, which expires March 28, 2014, and is worth $57.50 per share, or about $1.6 billion, “inadequate and opportunistic.”

Warren, Mich. — Art Van Furniture has announced a seventh Chicagoland location in Downers Grove. For the new store, slated to open in January of 2015, the retailer plans to renovate a two story 106,000-sq.-ft. former Home Depot Expo Center on Butterfield Road off of Interstate 88.

Art Van Furniture will open its sixth Chicagoland location in Woodridge-Bolingbrook in April. Last year, the retailer rolled out five new stores in the region — in Logan Square, Bedford Park, Orland Park, Batavia and Merrillville.