Starbucks will be closing over 600 of its stores this summer though particular store closing locations have not yet been announced. According to the Seattle Times:
About 200 of those will be directly operated by Starbucks, with the rest managed by other companies like bookstores and airport concession firms.
And:
About 70 percent of the stores closing had opened since October 2005. That means Starbucks is shuttering about 10 percent of the 4,081 U.S. stores opened since then.
“They probably made some poor real-estate decisions, and when they opened stores in fiscal 2006, they probably didn’t anticipate how tough the economy would be and how the brand would be struggling,” said John Owens, an analyst at the research firm Morningstar in Chicago.
I certainly hope that our Roosevelt Island Starbucks will not be among those closed. If so, it will be a huge setback for the development of any additional retail amenities here on Roosevelt Island. The Real Deal reported in December 2007 that before Starbucks came to Roosevelt Island:
“It looks like East Berlin before the wall fell,” said Andrew Oliver, executive vice president of Cushman & Wakefield Sonnenblick Goldman. For years, there was only one chain store, a Gristedes grocery, and much of the remaining retail was service-oriented: a diner, a Chinese takeout joint and a thrift shop, among others.
This fall, however, the island became home to a Duane Reade, which followed on the heels of the opening of the area’s first Starbucks. Both are tenants in a Hudson Companies/Related Companies complex, and part of a new wave of retail space that brokers say is changing the island.
Howard Shultz, please don’t close the Roosevelt Island Starbucks!