Famous Footwear slated to relocate Salinas store to Harden Ranch
famous footwear
Famous Footwear plans to relocate its Salinas store to the vacant Circuit City building in Harden Ranch Plaza, spokesmen for the retailer and shopping center said Thursday.
Famous Footwear in the Westridge Shopping Center has leased 7,000 of the site's 24,000 available square feet, said Arlene Nissen, general manager at Harden Ranch Plaza. Tenants are still being sought for the remaining space. The shoe retailer plans to vacate Westridge and open July 27 at Harden Ranch, a company spokesman said.
The Circuit City site in Harden Ranch has been vacant since November 2007, when the electronic retailer moved operations to the Boronda Crossing shopping center on North Davis Road.
Circuit City later went bankrupt and in January 2009 announced the closure of its 567 stores nationwide, including the Boronda Crossing and Sand City locations.
The same year Circuit City moved across Highway 101, Home Depot also left Harden Ranch for Boronda Crossing. Vacant since then, the former Home Depot building will soon be the home of a new Walmart, which has tentatively scheduled to open there in early July. Walmart's Westridge site will be vacated for renovations and later reopen, company spokesmen have said.
Meanwhile, staff and merchandise are migrating to Harden Ranch.
Like most merchants, Harden Ranch's tenants have been hard hit by the recession. While that hasn't changed, Nissen said some are reporting encouraging signs.
"It's coming back a little bit," she said. "The discounters are showing better growth numbers than the other retailers, as people are shifting the way they shop. Everybody's looking for a discount, even people who didn't shop discounts before.
Anybody that's a discounter is thriving. They're picking up where other stores are not able to."
Harden Ranch's discounters include Target, Factory 2-U and Marshall's.
Famous Footwear had no immediate comment on the reasons for the relocation.
"There are certain businesses, Famous Footwear and other discount-oriented stores, that traditionally like to go wherever Walmart goes," said Jeffrey Weir, economic development director for the city of Salinas.See Also :