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NO GOLDS FOR RETAIL AT WINTER GAMES

The Winter Olympic Games were a major disappointment to retailers in downtown Salt Lake City, with residents staying home to avoid the tourists, and tourists staying in the Olympic complex.

“Shop owners on the whole are disappointed, especially the restaurant owners,” said John Jones, vice president at CB Richard Ellis in Salt Lake City, following the February games.

Shopping centers away from the hubbub, however, reported that they were doing better.

“By focusing on the local customer, we’ve been able to keep drawing shoppers into the malls,” said Ramona Bigger, director of corporate marketing for JP Realty, which owns four Utah centers, including the 757,000-square-foot Cottonwood Mall in Salt Lake City.

LANDLORD HIT FOR KMART’S TAX BILL

Add stopped checks to the list of worries for Kmart’s landlords. One owner in the U.S. South says the discounter stopped payment on a check for more than $100,000 that it had given him to cover state property taxes, forcing him to fork out his own money. It was either that or risk violating his loan mortgage agreement, he said. To make things worse, Kmart told neither him nor the state what it had done. “I think a lot of centers think their taxes are paid, and they may not be,” said the owner, who asked not to be named. “We had to pay the taxes ourselves to stay out of default.”

GAP OPENS ONE-OF-A-KIND FLAGSHIP

Despite mounting losses and falling sales, Gap has followed through on its plan to stack three flagship stores on top of one another at the Dallas Galleria, creating a new brand-based anchor at the center that opened in early February.

Banana Republic, Gap and Old Navy each occupy an entire floor of what was once the Galleria’s Saks Fifth Avenue store — a total of 127,639 square feet. This is the largest presentation of Gap brands in a single shopping center anywhere in the world. But company executives say it is not a prototype for future stores.

“This is not a pilot program of any sort,” said Stacy McLean, a Gap spokeswoman. “We just found a really great opportunity in a really great mall.”

Banana Republic occupies 39,277 square feet on the Galleria’s first level, with a street entrance and valet parking. Gap’s store is 43,509 square feet on the second level, with access from the shopping center and a newly opened parking garage speed ramp. Old Navy’s location is 44,853 square feet on the center’s third level. All three stores have their own separate entrances.

SEARS SCRAPS EATONS

Sears has abandoned its strategy to revive the former T. Eaton department store chain in Canada and will instead convert its remaining locations into Sears Canada stores. The move, which brings with it a one-time $40 million charge for Sears, will be completed during the next four months. Two flagships, one at the Toronto Eaton Centre and the other in downtown Vancouver, will be halved in size.

Through its Canadian subsidiary, in December 1999 Sears bought 19 Eaton’s locations from the bankrupt T. Eaton for C$80 million. It converted 12 into Sears while reopening seven as upscale eatons stores.