Gimbels’ N.Y. Stores to Close, Prepare for Sales

Gimbels’ famous flagship department store, which has operated for 76 years in Manhattan’s Herald Square, will be closing this week in preparation for a mammoth going-out-of-business sale.

The Herald Square store, along with its struggling sibling on Lexington Avenue at 86th Street, will be closed Thursday for about a week so that merchandise can be counted and price tags marked down for a 12-week sale, Batus Inc., the retailer’s parent, said Tuesday.

After that, the stores will close permanently, spokesman Gene Russell said. The announcement ended months of speculation about the stores’ fate. Batus, a British company that also owns Saks Fifth Avenue, said in January that it would sell the Gimbels chain as part of a restructuring.

Meanwhile, Russell said, negotiations continue with “a number of parties” for the sale of the two Manhattan stores and six others in the chain for which buyers have not yet been found. They “will be sold as retail units, real estate properties or a combination of both,” he said.

As expected, Batus announced Tuesday that Allied Stores is buying 10 Gimbels stores in New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania. One of those will become a Pomeroy’s, and the others will be converted to Stern’s.

Associated Dry Goods also bought a Gimbels store in New Jersey that will carry the Hahne & Co. name.