Old Navy ships out of Crossroads Mall

The Old Navy clothing store at Crossroads Mall has closed.

Catherine Rhoades, a spokeswoman for Gap Inc., which owns Old Navy, declined to give details about the decision to close the store near 72nd and Dodge Streets.

“A number of factors can impact the decision, including store location, store performance and number of stores in the market,” she said.

The closing last Thursday leaves the Omaha metro area with four Old Navy stores: at Westroads and Oak View Malls in Omaha; Shadow Lake Towne Center, Papillion; and Mall of the Bluffs, Council Bluffs.

“We’re always sad to close a store and hope our customers will continue to shop with us at a nearby store or online,” Rhoades said.

The closing comes about two weeks after mall owner Simon Property Group listed the enclosed shopping center for sale and after several years of major changes there. Target opened at the east end in 2006, and longtime anchor Dillard’s closed in late 2008. Zales and Gordon’s jewelers and the Gap are among stores that have left Crossroads in recent months.

Target and longtime tenant Sears, at the mall’s west end, said earlier this month that they have no plans to close their Crossroads Mall stores.

Bob Kahn, the mall’s general manager, declined to comment on how the closing of Old Navy might affect the mall, saying he doesn’t discuss the mall’s occupancy rate.

“We just hope that as the economy becomes healthier, many of our tenants will become healthier,” he said.

U.S. News & World Report recently highlighted Crossroads Mall in a list of “most endangered malls,” using data from Green Street Advisors, an investment research firm that specializes in publicly owned real estate companies. That report put Crossroads’ occupancy at 68 percent, compared with the 92 percent occupancy rate for the average property in the data.

San Francisco-based Gap Inc. is the largest U.S. clothing chain. In addition to Gap and Old Navy, it owns Banana Republic, Piperlime and Athleta. Old Navy is the company’s largest sales division.

Gap Inc.’s chairman and CEO earlier this month announced plans to remodel 50 Old Navy stores in an attempt to regain market share lost in the economic downturn, according to the company’s Web site.

Gap Inc. net sales were $1.03 billion for the month of May, a 5 percent decrease from the same period a year earlier.

Old Navy reported that comparable store sales for May were up 3 percent, while the Gap and upscale Banana Republic reported declines of 11 percent and 14 percent, respectively.

As of May 2, Old Navy planned to close about 20 stores and open five, according to the company Web site.

Old Navy operated 1,066 stores in North America at the end of the first quarter.

Contact the writer:

444-1183, christine.laue@owh.com