Little left for sale at JCPenney

By Dan Nakaso and Andrew Gomes
Advertiser Staff Writers

Loyal JCPenney shoppers walked through the skeletons of the four remaining Hawai'i Penney stores yesterday as the company prepared to close them all today, leaving many employees to face an uncertain future.

Five-year-old Jaimee Sisiam, put on a bridal veil that her grandmother, Loretta Baptist, found in the remnants of merchandise that remained yesterday at JCPenney's Ala Moana Center store. The store officially closes today. Bruce Asato • The Honolulu Advertiser

The last three months of special, going-out-of-business discounts produced phenomenal sales for the four remaining stores at Pearlridge and Ala Moana on O'ahu and on Maui and the Big Island, said Tim Lyons, a company spokesman. October sales this year were better than a typical December when shoppers concentrate on holiday purchases.

"People were lining up," Lyons said. "It was just incredible. Now it's down to the very last. It's kind of setting in that this is the end."

Texas-based J.C. Penney Co. Inc. opened its first Hawai'i store at Ala Moana in 1966 and followed six years later with the store in Pearlridge. It opened a store on Maui in 1994 and another in Hilo a year later.

But in the past three years, the company closed more than 10 percent of its stores nationwide. A store at Windward Mall was closed in 1998.

A liquidator is coordinating the selling of every last piece of Hawai'i merchandise and store fixtures, including racks, sign holders, tables and chairs. The Ala Moana store, even though its official last day of retail business is today, will remain open until Thursday to continue selling fixtures and equipment, Lyons said.

Many employees at the Hawai'i stores had been with JCPenney for years longer than typical Mainland Penney employees, Lyons said. Their length of service made the departure harder to take, he said.

The Ala Moana store manager, for instance, had worked for Penney for about 25 years. The woman, who declined to be interviewed, is going to retire, Lyons said.

While some store employees have left for new jobs, most, Lyons said, stayed until the end. Some are retiring.

Sheila Subion of Kalihi, who works as a Penney sales associate and stock room worker full-time, needs to find another job. Like many, Subion, 25, had two jobs — one working full-time for Penney and another part-time job working in the Ala Moana food court.

Now she needs to find another full-time job.

"I have to," she said. "We knew this was going to happen but it's still hard."

Other retailers will be moving into Penney's vacated space, creating more job opportunities.

On Maui at Queen Ka'ahumanu Center, negotiations by another retailer to purchase the Penney store are expected to be completed as early as today, according to Scott Crockford, real property vice president for the mall's general partner Maui Land & Pineapple Co.

Although Crockford would not confirm it, one person familiar with negotiations said Federated Department Stores, which owns Macy's, is buying the site.

At Pearlridge Center, a spokeswoman for Inspiration Furniture, which recently bought Penney's space, said negotiations are progressing with several large Mainland retail tenants.

Inspiration, which takes over the space Feb. 1, ruled out an earlier consideration to relocate its store outside the mall at Pearlridge into part of the Penney space, said company representative Joett Colgan.

She said retailers have been eager to take the space at O'ahu's second-largest mall, and that a decision on tenants could come as early as the end of the month.

"I think it's kind of been a desert for new (retailers) that need 65,000 square feet of space," she said. "We had a good response."

Both Colgan and Crockford said new retailers could be operating in the two Penney spaces by summer.

Chicago-based General Growth Properties owns the Penney spaces at Ala Moana and Prince Kuhio Plaza in Hilo. It did not say what its plans are.

Yesterday, workers on the street level of the Ala Moana Penney store taped sheets of white paper over the glass windows and doors.

Betsy Vacca-Farley of Kailua and her mother, Andre'e Sprink, took two steps inside and put their hands on their heads as they both said, "Oh, my God."

"We'd thought we'd come in to buy something," Sprink said. "But it's all furnishings."

Sprink used to buy Vacca-Farley's school clothes at the store. When she grew up, Vacca-Farley helped open the Windward Mall store in the early 1980s. She became a loyal shopper who made most her purchases at JCPenney.

"Half of the furniture in my house is from JCPenney's," Vacca-Farley said, "my bedroom set, my dining room set, my curtains, window shades."

She outfitted her two children with Penney clothes and had them pose for photos each year at the Penney studio.

"You could always find what you needed at Penney's," Vacca-Farley said. "Where am I going to go now? You've got me. I shopped there so much that I knew my credit card number by heart."

Half an hour later, Vacca-Farley emerged with the only thing she found worth buying — metal devices to measure foot sizes.

"Ten bucks for both," she said. "I felt like I had to support them today because I've always supported them."

Like other shoppers looking for bargains yesterday, Toni Maxwell, a retiree from Kailua, walked out of the store empty handed.

"It's pretty sad," she said, "nothing left but fixtures. I used to buy all my make-up there and they had a good selection of Hawaiian jewelry and at good prices."

Her friend, Myra Blondine of Kane'ohe, called Penney "the little big store. It had class and quality and the prices were always right."

But Loretta Baptist of Mo'ili'ili found one small treasure among all of the racks and cases for her granddaughter, Jaimee Sisiam.

Jaimee, who is 5, loves to play dress-up and lying around with no fanfare was a bridal veil for $10.

"There was nothing left," Baptist said, "but we found it."

With her grandmother's help, Jaimee put the veil on her head as the price tag swung across her face.