Macy’s Center City closure will affect 128 employees

The closure of Macy’s in Center City will put 128 people out of work, the company said in a notice to the government on Friday.

While that’s not news to the department store’s staff, after the company on Thursday announced its plans to close its Center City store, it highlights the economic ripple effects of the closure, which the city’s commerce director has called “the end of an era for Philadelphia’s retail landscape.”

Job eliminations will take place between March 18 and March 31, Macy’s said in a letter to the Pennsylvania Department of Labor & Industry and Philadelphia Mayor Cherelle L. Parker. The notice was filed in accordance with the Federal Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act (WARN Act), which requires employers to give advance notice of major layoffs and plant closures.

That WARN notice did not include the jobs at the Exton Square Mall Macy’s, which is also set to shut down, as part of a wave of 66 store closures across the country.

The Center City store will close in March. The iconic building previously, and for much of its history, housed John Wanamaker’s flagship department store.

In its WARN letter, Macy’s said employees would receive information about benefits and the possibility of transferring to other Macy’s locations. None of them are represented by a union, the letter said.

“We are committed to making this transition as smooth as possible,” wrote Allison Johnson, a human resources VP for Macy’s.

The number of employees affected by the Macy’s closure — 128 — is yet another illustration of the department store’s massive footprint in Center City. Other clothing stores that announced their plans to close last year had employed a dozen or two dozen workers, like Vans, which accounted for 12 employees in a WARN notice filed last month. The recently closed Giant Heirloom Market at 801 Market St., a 32,000-square-foot grocery store, had half as many employees as Macy’s, 61, when it announced its plans to shutter in November.

Employees were told about the store’s impending closure on Thursday morning, hours before the Parker administration held a public announcement to discuss it. Some workers told The Inquirer on Thursday they were not surprised by the news. Morgan Lytle, a beauty consultant at Macy’s, said she “saw it coming,” calling the retailer “a pretty dead store.”

That’s not a unique issue. East Market between Macy’s and Independence Hall, once a bustling, go-to shopping district, has been plagued by vacancies despite attempts at revival.

Last year at the Center City location, Macy’s security guard Eric Harrison was stabbed to death and another security guard was wounded by a man who had attempted to shoplift and was confronted by the guards. The man pleaded guilty to murder last month.

Harrison’s family sued Macy’s and its affiliates, alleging a lack of security and safety measures that they say might have prevented their son’s death.