Name Lowe’s was taken down from the store on Randall Road, less than a full day after the home improvement company closed the Elgin store in addition to one in Schaumburg.
The two stores closed Sunday night leaving 195 employees without a job, the company said Monday.
Spokeswoman Katie Cody said the two suburban stores were among seven across the country to close Sunday night due to disappointing profits. The other stores were located in Alaska, Connecticut, Georgia, Minnesota and New York.
“Unfortunately, despite the hard work of store employees…we didn’t see profitability for those stores, and they had to close,” she said.
Leo Nelson, president of the Elgin Area Chamber of Commerce, said he had no prior indication the store would be closing, but said the lack of warning is not uncommon when it comes to large corporations.
“It’s a major loss of an outstanding retail store,” he said.
He added the closing could have a significant impact on the city’s sales tax revenue and said the chamber will do what it can to help get a new business into the building.
Colleen Lavery, chief financial officer for Elgin, did not immediately have sales tax figures available for the store, but said she has contacted the state requesting the information so she can determine how much of a hit the city will take.
Rick Kozal, assistant city manager for Elgin said it wouldn’t be easy to find a business to fill the Lowe’s facility.
“Finding any retailer to open in this environment is difficult especially with the action in the stock market,” he said.
But, he added, he does not believe the closing is reflective of the Elgin retail market, and is instead symptomatic of issues across the company. He said pointing to a new Walmart that is under construction at Randall and Bowes roads as proof of the city’s healthy marketplace.
Lowe's spokeswoman Stacy Lentz said the Elgin store routinely missed sales estimates since it opened in 2007, marking it for closure.
When business wrapped up Sunday, employees were told the store would not reopen the next day. In line with legal requirements, they will continue to receive benefits and pay for 60 days, according to Lentz.
Elgin Chief Financial Officer Colleen Lavery requested sales tax reports for Lowe's from the state but will not know for weeks how the closing will affect the city's budget for the rest of this year and in the future.
Mayor David Kaptain said he is concerned about surrounding businesses, filling the soon-to-be vacant building and, most importantly, the employees who lost their jobs.
“I don't know if there are places that are going to absorb them because of the job market,” Kaptain said.
But with the bad comes more promising news. Kozal said Walmart is scheduled to open at Bowes and Randall roads in time for the Thanksgiving shopping weekend. And the company will continue with phase two of its plan and open a Sam's Club next year.
A $10 million retail project anchored by a Walmart Neighborhood Market has won final approval in Menomonee Falls, including $820,000 in village funds to help pay for cleaning up a former gas station at the project site.
Gatlin Development Co. is to begin construction this fall on the 40,000-square-foot Walmart supermarket and a separate 5,000-square-foot building for other retail tenants, Village Manager Mark Fitzgerald said Tuesday. The buildings are expected to be completed by next fall.
Gatlin will demolish a former Piggly Wiggly supermarket and other vacant space at Pilgrim Village shopping center at Pilgrim Road and Main St. to make way for the Walmart grocery. Portions of the shopping center leased to Friends of Nature pet supply store and Otto's Wine and Spirits will remain.
The Village Board unanimously approved a development agreement with Gatlin on Monday. That agreement includes paying $406,000 to Gatlin for strips of land at the corner of Pilgrim Road and Main St. now occupied by a vacant gas station. The village will use that land for a future street widening, Fitzgerald said.
Also, the village is providing $414,000 to Gatlin to pay for demolishing the gas station and doing an environmental cleanup at that site. The gas station will be replaced by the smaller retail building.
The $820,000 will be repaid to the village through property taxes from the new development and other new projects within the village's tax incremental financing district on Main St., which includes the new Radisson Hotel. The payback will take an estimated eight years, Fitzgerald said.
Once the tax district's entire debt is repaid, property taxes from the Walmart, Radisson and other new projects along Main St. will go to the village, its school district and other local governments.
The village will advance no more than $820,000 toward redevelopment of the gas station site. A total of $620,000 will fund developer improvements, as well as a right of way land purchase allowing for future expansion of Pilgrim Road. The village also advanced $200,000 to buffer costs resulting from environmental remediation needed on the site.
Fitzgerald said all of the funds pertain solely to the gas station site, and will not be used for the larger development that includes the Neighborhood Market.
As part of the agreement, the village is requiring the developer to construct a “landmark” building on the corner of Main Street and Pilgrim Road. Fitzgerald said this will be a retail building with aesthetics suitable for that high profile corner in the village.
“This will be retail building very with pleasing architecture and appropriate design for that very visible corner,” Fitzgerald said.
An occupant for the “landmark” building is yet unknown, and plans for it will need to go through the village’s approval process. However, plans will likely appear soon as the village included a “time is of the essence” clause in the agreement, which requires timely completion of the project.
Since the gas station property is within a tax incremental financing district, the village will be repaid through additional tax revenue generated from redeveloping the site.
The overall redevelopment plans call for the construction of three more retail buildings along Main Street, in addition to Schlotzsky’s Deli, which will be remodeled. Both Friends of Nature and Otto’s Beverage Center will stay as well, but their storefronts will be revamped.
Both Minuteman Press and Sounds Audio have found new locations within Menomonee Falls. Minuteman Press has moved to the Falls Plaza II shopping center on Appleton Avenue. Sounds Audio has moved into the Neu’s building on Ridgeway.
Paris - France and Germany unveiled far-reaching plans on Tuesday for closer euro zone integration and said joint euro bonds may be a longer-term option, leaving the currency area vulnerable to more attacks from traders.
Under heavy pressure to restore confidence in the euro zone following a dramatic market slump, President Nicolas Sarkozy and Chancellor Angela Merkel stopped short of increasing the bloc's rescue fund but vowed to stand side-by-side in defending the euro and laid the groundwork for future fiscal union.
Their message was that the focus should be on further economic integration rather than signing bailout checks, and suggested that straying from euro zone rules and fiscal targets would no longer be tolerated.
"We have exactly the same position on euro bonds," Sarkozy told a joint news conference with Merkel after their talks.
"Euro bonds can be imagined one day, but at the end of the European integration process, not at the beginning."
But many experts said the measures would fail to assuage markets, which believe a common bond is the only way to ensure affordable financing for euro zone members struggling with debt.
U.S. stocks dropped more than 1 percent and the euro slid as the
Toyota Motor Corp., the world’s largest carmaker, lost 1.4 percent. Sony Corp., Japan’s biggest exporter of consumer electronics, dropped 1.9 percent after talks in Paris yesterday between French President Nicolas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Inpex Corp., Japan’s No. 1 energy exploration company, declined 2.3 percent on lower crude prices.
The Nikkei 225 Stock Average fell 0.8 percent to 9,039.47 as of 9:31 a.m. in Tokyo. The broader Topix index dropped 0.5 percent to 774.98 with three stocks retreating for every two that rose.
The Paris meeting “confirmed debt issues cannot be resolved in a short period of time,” said Hiroichi Nishi, an equities manager in Tokyo at SMBC Nikko Securities Inc.
Futures on the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index slid 0.4 percent today. In New York, the index fell 1 percent to 1,192.76 yesterday as the German and French leaders rejected selling euro bonds and expanding the 440 billion-euro ($633 billion) rescue fund. The leaders also proposed resubmitting a financial- transaction tax that was rejected in 2010.
Gross domestic product in the 17-nation euro area expanded 0.2 percent in the second quarter from the previous three months, when the economy grew 0.8 percent, the European Union’s statistics office in Luxembourg said in a statement yesterday. That’s the weakest growth since the euro region emerged from a recession in late 2009 and was less that the 0.3 percent median estimate of 34 economists in a Bloomberg News survey.
In the U.S., housing starts fell 1.5 percent in July from June, the Commerce Department reported yesterday. Building permits, a proxy for future construction, also dropped.
“The U.S. housing numbers were not strong, and that signals a slowdown in the U.S. economy may persist,” Nishi said.
Exporters declined after reports showed economic growth in Europe and the U.S. is slowing, hurting the outlook for overseas earnings. Sony slumped 1.9 percent to 1,668 yen. Toyota lost 1.4 percent to 2,860 yen. Honda Motor Co., Japan’s third-largest carmaker, sank 2.3 percent to 2,556 yen.
Mining companies dropped on lower oil prices. Inpex lost 2.3 percent to 514,000 yen. Japan Petroleum Exploration Co., the second-biggest oil driller, slid 0.8 percent to 3,330 yen.
Crude oil for September delivery declined 1.4 percent to settle at $86.65 a barrel in New York yesterday. The London Metal Exchange Index of prices for six industrial metals including copper and aluminum dropped 0.5 percent.
