Macy's going to close Valley View Center store

Following a 34-year run, a Dallas Macy's store is among nine Macy's closing nationwide in light of slow sales, the company announced Friday.
The Macy's Valley View Center location, which employs 132, will go into sales-clearance mode on Jan. 13, and once it sells out of merchandise, its doors will close, said Macy's spokesman Ed Smith.
Macy’s Inc., the owner of its namesake chain and Bloomingdale’s, said Friday that it would close stores deemed to have inadequate sales and eliminate 899 jobs.
Macy’s will shut locations in Akron, Canton and North Randall, Ohio; Lake Charles, La.; Riverdale, Utah; Indianapolis; Oklahoma City; Houston; and Dallas. Final clearance sales will begin in the next few weeks, the retailer said.
The company will operate 815 Macy’s after shutting the stores, all of them locations the chain acquired when it bought May Department Stores in 2005, a spokesman, Jim Sluzewski, said. The retailer’s sales growth has been hurt by the former May stores, which were converted to the Macy’s name last year, analysts said.
“They are certainly muddling through, but not muddling through very well,” Patricia Edwards, a portfolio manager at Wentworth, Hauser & Violich in Seattle, said of the merger. “It’s a big bite to chew off, and these customers are used to different things.”
Former May shoppers want coupons and national brands, Ms. Edwards said, while Macy’s clients are accustomed to that chain’s own labels. She holds shares of retailers including Target.
Shares of Macy’s rose 44 cents, or 1.8 percent, to $25.48, on the New York Stock Exchange.
In a statement, Macy’s chief executive, Terry J. Lundgren, said: “While the decision to close stores is difficult, it is necessary that we do so selectively in locations with declining sales and where we have been unable to identify sufficient growth opportunities.”
The company, based in Cincinnati, opened 10 new stores and one furniture gallery in 2007. In 2008, it expects to open five stores, and has six to eight new locations planned for 2009.
Macy’s $11 billion acquisition of May made it the second-largest department store company after Sears Holdings. Macy’s converted more than 400 May locations, including Marshall Field’s and Hecht’s, to the Macy’s name, doubling the size of the chain, in September 2006. It operates 40 Bloomingdale’s stores.