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Steve & Barry's to close Cape locationFriday, August 29, 2008The Steve & Barry's discount clothing store in West Park Mall in Cape Girardeau will be closing, company officials confirmed Thursday afternoon. "BHY S&B Holdings announced that it intends to run a smaller base of Steve & Barry's stores, better positioning the company to reach its profitability goals," company spokesman Howard Schacter said in a written statement. The company had no comment on when the Cape Girardeau store would close or the fate of the employees. West Park Mall officials declined to comment. Steve & Barry's was purchased Tuesday for $163 million by BHY S&B Holdings LLC, a newly formed affiliate of investment firms Bay Harbour Management and York Capital Management. The company had filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection July 9. Under the terms of the purchase agreement, the majority of the 276 Steve & Barry's stores in 39 states will continue to serve customers, offering collections created with entertainers and athletes such as Sarah Jessica Parker, Venus Williams, Amanda Bynes, Laird Hamilton, Ben Wallace and Bubba Watson. All of the celebrities maintain a licensing relationship with Steve & Barry's. BHY S&B Holdings has a history in turnarounds of troubled or bankrupt corporations. The company's holdings include the former Aladdin Casino, which now operates in Las Vegas as Planet Hollywood Resort and Casino, and Barneys New York. The 80,000-square-foot store first opened in Cape Girardeau on Oct. 14, 2005, occupying an anchor spot that had sat vacant since ShopKo closed its doors in 2001. At the time of its opening, the store had 67 stores in 26 states, with plans to open another 70 by the end of 2005. But by July 1, The Wall Street Journal reported that the company was considering closing as many as 100 stores in the near future, if it did not find emergency financing. According to the Journal, Steve & Barry's business model depends on one-time large cash payments to the company from mall operators to open stores on their properties. The total profit margin for the company's $1 billion in annual sales was 1 to 3 percent, the Journal reported, and those profits began drying up as retail property owners retrench in the uncertain economy. While company officials did confirm the Cape Girardeau store would close, they had no comment on the fate of its other underperforming stores. 335-6611, extension 137 Comments  Note: The nature of the Internet makes it impractical for our staff to review every comment. If you feel that a comment is offensive, please Login or Create an account first, and then you will be able to flag a comment as objectionable. Please also note that those who post comments on semissourian.com may do so using a screen name, which may or may not reflect a website user's actual name. Readers should be careful not to assign comments to real people who may have names similar to screen names. Refrain from obscenity in your comments, and to keep discussions civil, don't say anything in a way your grandmother would be ashamed to read.
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If West Park Mall wouldn't charge outrages prices, maybe stores could afford to stay there. I had a fried who owned a shop that was about 200 feet of floor space and he couldn't keep a profit with the high price.
I agree completely. When that mall first opened, I was a junior in high school. The place was packed out on Friday and Saturday nights. Now, it's a ghost town. If I need to go to the mall, GameStop and EB being my two fave haunts, I try to go on a Friday night because the place has no crowds whatsoever.
It seems to me that lowering the rent prices and opening the place up to a more diverse collection of goods sold would bring a lot more people into the mall. And that would be good for all the businesses.
Steve and Barry's operated in a space way too big for them. Maybe we can get a true anchor to the mall now like Dillard's or maybe a huge movie theater like the Chesterfield Mall.
As a mom of three children under age 10, I would love to see our mall check into getting a "Children's Place." Great prices, great selection, great quality clothing. The closest ones around are Paducah and St. Louis. I believe they could make a fortune in Cape!!! Love Gymboree, but way to expensive for the average working family. The Children's Place would be a great addition to our mall.