While a Target at this location sounds bad... I think it's best for the struggling mall. This part of town could use a discount retailer and it's one of the 2-story variety.
Younkers plans to close its Crossroads Mall store
Younkers at Crossroads Mall, one of the 44-year-old shopping center's three anchor stores, will close at the end of January.
A spokeswoman for Saks Inc., Younkers' parent company, said a Target store is expected to move into the space. However, Aimee Sands, a spokeswoman for the Minneapolis-based discount retailer, said Tuesday that although the company is interested in the site, it was "too premature to say anything is final."
Phone calls to Simon Property Group of Indianapolis, which owns the Omaha mall at 72nd and Dodge Streets, were not returned Tuesday.
Younkers' 155 employees were told Monday that the store would close, said spokeswoman Julia Bentley. Closing the Crossroads store was a financial decision for Saks, she said.
"We will make every effort to transfer people into other positions at other locations."
Employees who aren't offered other positions will receive severance packages, she said.
Bentley said Younkers remains committed to the Omaha market with stores at the Westroads Mall and Oak View Mall. The company also has stores in Grand Island and Lincoln.
The closing of Younkers will leave Sears and Dillard's as the remaining anchors of Crossroads.
The announcement ends months of speculation about the future of the Younkers location.
In March of this year, Sands suggested that a Target store might be coming to a site near 72nd and Dodge Streets. She said then that any new store would be a traditional Target, not a superstore.
Target also has a store at 360 N. Saddle Creek Road, but Sands did not say in March or on Tuesday whether it would be affected by a possible new store near 72nd and Dodge.
Target operates anchor stores in some shopping malls, such as its one-level store at the Mall of the Bluffs in Council Bluffs. The company also has 27 multilevel stores nationwide that include escalators for shopping carts, Sands said.
Crossroads' current Younkers store is a combination of two of the oldest and most prestigious names in Midwest retailing - Younkers, founded in 1856, and Brandeis, begun in 1881.
The first Brandeis store was opened in downtown Omaha in 1881 by Jonas Brandeis. His three sons, Arthur, Hugo and Emil, later joined him in the business. During the mid-1950s, Brandeis was Nebraska's leading department store retailer.
Brandeis Investment Co. developed the property bounded by 72nd, Dodge and Cass Streets that would become the Crossroads Mall - Omaha's third-largest shopping center behind Westroads and Oak View.
Younkers was founded as Younker & Brothers, a general store in Keokuk, Iowa, in 1856 by brothers Lipman, Samuel and Marcus Younker. Over the years, through a series of additions, enlargements and mergers, Younkers became Iowa's largest department store. In 1979, it was acquired by Equitable of Iowa Cos.
In 1987, Younkers purchased Omaha's five Brandeis department stores, including the one at the Crossroads, and renamed them Younkers.
*wishful*
