Forever 21, Kohl’s to lease former Mervyn’s stores

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Forever 21 Inc. and Kohl’s Corp. won a joint bid to acquire leases to 46 stores from bankrupt Mervyn’s for $6.25 million, the chains said Friday. The deal gives Kohl’s the leasing rights to 31 stores; Forever 21 will assume the other 15 locations, pending approval by the court overseeing the bankruptcy proceedings for Mervyn’s.

“We got exactly the stores that we wanted,” said Christopher Lee, senior vice president at Forever 21. “We’ve waited a long time for this, and it finally came for us. This is just the beginning for us for big-box expansions.”

Lee said the Los Angeles retailer, known for its trendy but affordable fashions, planned to convert the locations to the Forever 21 brand early next year. The move helps the retailer, one of the fastest-growing privately held companies in the area, extend its brand to significantly larger stand-alone retail spaces. Currently, most of its roughly 430 locations are in shopping malls. The average Mervyn’s store occupies 80,000 square feet.

We are pleased with the results of the auction,” said Kevin Mansell, chief executive of Kohl’s, in a statement. “These locations provide increased presence in under-penetrated markets.”

Lee said some of the Southern California Mervyn’s locations that Forever 21 acquired include stores in Montebello, Cerritos and Lakewood. In October, Forever 21 said it had submitted a bid to acquire 150 Mervyn’s stores; it later modified its bid.

-- Andrea Chang