Gelson’s closing store in Paseo Colorado

Gelson’s Markets will be closing its Paseo Colorado store in July, company President Rob McDougall announced in a statement this week.

The departure of Gelson’s follows the closure last week of an 158,000-square-foot Macy’s department store on the other end of the upscale outdoor shopping and residential complex.

Gelson’s is an original tenant of the Paseo, launched in 2001 to replace the dilapidated Plaza Pasadena mall.

Brenda McDaniel, senior vice president of Gelson’s parent company the Arden Group, said the 60 Gelson’s employees who work at the Paseo market will be transferred to other stores.

The Paseo Gelson’s simply wasn’t getting enough business to continue operating, she said.

“We had a lot of really great customers, but we didn’t have enough of them and that’s really the bottom line,” McDaniel said. “There’s no question parking was an issue, but what else it is I just don’t know. It just wasn’t the right location.”

City officials and Paseo property managers had previously provided Gelson’s with parking improvements and other accommodations.

“It’s a very nice center … [but] no matter what we did or how hard we tried, it wasn’t a convenient place for customers to drive to,” McDaniel said.

Gelson’s operates 16 other stores throughout Southern California. The chain closed a Northridge location last year, but plans to open a new store in Long Beach before the end of this year, according to company statements.

Paseo managers referred questions to a spokesman for DDR Corp., the property’s Ohio-based parent company, who could not be reached.

The company previously announced plans to convert the former Macy’s site, which predated Paseo, into an upscale hotel.

The impending closure of the Paseo Gelson’s leaves the company without a location in the San Gabriel Valley. The nearest Gelson’s to Pasadena is on Hyperion Avenue in Los Angeles.

The company has long searched for other locations in the San Gabriel Valley, but “quite frankly we haven’t been able to find a match yet,” McDaniel said.

— Joe Piasecki, Times Community News

Follow Joe Piasecki on Twitter: @JoePiasecki.