Bullock’s Closure to Affect City but Few Shoppers : Business: The store suffered from its location separate from the main part of the mall. Most of its 170 employees will be out of jobs.
On the morning after R. H. Macy & Co. announced its plans to close the Bullock’s in Lakewood, the only people publicly mourning the loss were city officials.
If employees were upset, it was hard to tell. They went about their business stoically, observing the company’s request not to speak to the press.
Most customers, meanwhile, did not seem to care about the store’s pending closure.
A couple of shoppers said they would miss Bullock’s, but most complained that the store is too expensive, too limited in its merchandise and too far away from the main part of Lakewood Center Mall. The building on Clark Avenue is separated from the rest of the shopping center by a huge expanse of parking lot.
“My sister lives in Long Beach and she doesn’t even come here,” said Whittier resident Lorraine Ayres, 69, who met a friend outside Bullock’s on Tuesday but did no shopping.
Lakewood resident Debbie Jones and two friends also walked away from the department store empty-handed. They spent five minutes there Tuesday morning looking for a cosmetics promotion before they realized that they were at the wrong store. “It should close. It’s too expensive,” said Jones, 29.
Macy earlier this week announced its plans to close 11 stores nationwide, including eight I. Magnin and Bullock’s stores in California. Of the Southland stores, the most prominent is the historic, Art Deco-style I. Magnin on Wilshire Boulevard. While the Wilshire store has become a Los Angeles landmark, the boxy Bullock’s in Lakewood is as unassuming as an office building.
If hearts were breaking over the pending closure, they were at Lakewood City Hall, where officials were dreading the expected drop in sales tax revenue.
“Here we are in a time of recession; there is a grave and serious state (financial) crisis. . . . Yes, this is going to hurt,” city Finance Director Nancy E. Hicks said.
The Bullock’s store contributes about $200,000 in sales taxes to the city each year, according to Skip Keyzers, senior vice president of MaceRich Co., which owns Lakewood Center Mall.
“Every day that store is empty, it’ll cost us,” Hicks said.
Figures for last year have not been tabulated, but in 1991, the entire mall generated about $3.3 million in sales tax for the city, she said.
The city relies on the 42-year-old mall to generate about 45% of its sales tax revenue, Hicks said. Already, mostly because of the recession, sales taxes from the mall are expected to drop to about $3 million this fiscal year, she said. By comparison, in 1989, the mall generated $3.5 million in sales tax.
In recent years, Lakewood has suffered several economic blows. The Buffums department store on Faculty Avenue was closed in 1991, and a number of auto dealers have left Lakewood for Cerritos and Signal Hill.
Bullock’s officials said they plan to close the Lakewood store in 60 to 90 days. What will happen to the building is uncertain. Bullock’s owns the building but leases the land from the mall, Keyzers said. Macy has filed for bankruptcy, which may affect the ownership of the building.
“If they abandon the lease under Chapter 11, they will, in effect, turn (the building) back to us,” Keyzers said.
When the Lakewood store closes, only a few of the 170 employees will be given jobs at other stores, Macy spokesman Michael Freitag said. “Most, unfortunately, will not be placed,” he said.
The Lakewood store’s closure is not expected to affect overall business at the mall and its about 245 retail and service outlets, Keyzers said.
“The impact is going to be minimal at the mall because Bullock’s is not attached to the mall,” Keyzers said.
Bullock’s placement away from the main part of Lakewood Center Mall, the fourth-highest volume mall in Southern California, hurt the department store, Keyzers said. For shoppers who want to take their children to the vintage carousel in the middle of the mall or who want to shop at one of the other mall stores, visiting Bullock’s means an extra trip.
For most car-minded Southern Californians, Bullock’s is not within walking distance. “It’s one of the reasons it wasn’t one of Bullock’s top stores,” Keyzers said.
Some shoppers earlier this week cited other reasons. One Cypress resident rummaging through a rack of clothing in search of a black blazer complained that “the store has gone downhill.”
Lakewood resident Nina Hartley, 32, disagreed and noted that the mall has no other department store carrying as many name brand items as Bullock’s. “The quality in this store is not available at the (Lakewood) mall,” said Hartley, who bought a baby shower gift. “You find something that’s 100% cotton here. You don’t find that everywhere. They have polyester.”
Yet most customers interviewed said the store’s pending closure would not affect them much. “It’s an all right store, but I’ll just go someplace else,” said Cerritos resident Christina Hill, 23, who brought her 2-year-old daughter in search of children’s clothes.
Hill and other customers said they visit Bullock’s for its bargain floor.
“With this recession, more people are looking for bargains,” said James Nakamura, 69, who was waiting for his wife, Jean, while she shopped on the discount floor. The Nakamuras traveled to Lakewood from Monterey Park in search of bargains at Bullock’s, but the store’s closure won’t make a difference to them, he said. “There are a lot of stores to shop around at.”
