Carson's will close its department stores by late summer after more than 160 years in operation.
After parent company Bon-Ton Stores failed to find a bidder willing to keep the business going, a bankruptcy judge approved the sale of the company's assets, including Carson's and other retail chains, to a joint venture of two liquidation firms and a group of company bondholders.
The flagship of Carson Pirie Scott was once among a full lineup of showy department stores _ including Marshall Field's, Sears, Montgomery Ward, Henry C. Lytton & Co. and Wieboldt Stores _ on Chicago's State Street. None of those names can be found there today.
The changes on State Street mirror changes in the broader retail industry, as many shoppers have traded department stores for specialty chains, discounters and, more recently, online merchants. And it's not just State Street _ department stores that once drew shoppers to suburban malls are pulling back there, too, creating large vacancies that are a challenge for weaker malls to fill.
Carson's will close 22 Chicago-area stores in addition to four that were already slated for closure. The chain's demise leaves struggling Sears as the last man standing among Illinois' once-mighty department stores.
Liquidation sales must be completed by Aug. 31, court documents show. The retailer employed nearly 23,000 people nationwide as of Feb. 2.
While Bon-Ton is headquartered in York, Pa., and Milwaukee, its Carson's and Bergner's chains began in Illinois, where they maintain a sizable presence. Of Bon-Ton's more than 200 stores, nearly 40 are in Illinois. Those stores cover nearly 4.3 million square feet of retail space.
Carson's started in Amboy, Ill., in 1854 before moving its headquarters to Chicago, where it took the name Carson, Pirie Scott & Co. in 1890. It opened its Louis Sullivan-designed flagship on State Street in 1904 and remained in operation there for more than a century. Target took over part of that space after Carson's closed in 2007.
After a series of ownership changes, Carson's became part of Bon-Ton, then the country's fifth-largest department store chain, in 2006. It was a year after Federated Department Stores acquired Marshall Field's, folding the longtime Chicago brand into its Macy's chain. Bon-Ton, however, kept the Carson's name on stores and this year even floated the idea of extending the brand to more of its stores.
Carson's liquidation comes after Toys R Us last month began going-out-of-business sales at 735 U.S. stores.
Retailers have announced store closings totaling 32 million square feet this year, on top of 100 million square feet last year, according to the CoStar Group.
