Macy's is the latest department store planning to leave Seattle's Northgate Mall, confirming its plans just a few months after JCPenney announced it would close this year.
The Seattle Times reports the department store will vacate the mall in early 2020 as well as the Redmond Town Center in the coming months.
“The decision to close a store is always a difficult one, but Macy’s is delighted to have served the Redmond community over the past 16 years and the Seattle community over the past 70 years,” a spokesperson for the department store told the Seattle Times.
The Macy's announcement comes at a time of massive redesign for the Northgate Mall property. Documents published last year detail plans to tear down a majority of the mall and replace it with multiple residential and office towers. It is not yet known what storefronts will remain at the mall.
Simon Property Group first pitched the idea in March 2018, but the documents filed in July show its new plans to create a "Central Park" and at least one hotel in addition to 1,200 new housing units at the site adjacent to a light rail station planned to open in 2021.
The proposal also calls for four additional mixed-use office towers, with 768,000 square feet of space, a three-story indoor fitness center with rooftop pool, and an additional seven-story 200-room hotel connected to the light rail station. All of the construction would be centered around a park, which would act as a gathering point in the new redevelopment.
Popular department stores like Sears, JCPenney, Nordstrom and Macy's have taken hits in the age of online shopping and boom of Amazon. Sears bounced back from bankruptcy just this week.
The Macy's spokesperson told the Seattle Times that employees at the Northgate and Redmond locations will be transferred to other sites or offered severance packages.
Macy's shoppers can enjoy a clearance sale the Redmond Town Center until the end of March.