ALGONQUIN – Another longtime tenant at the Algonquin Commons shopping center is closing shop, marking the third retailer to leave the village’s largest shopping center in the past year.
Kid footwear chain Stride Rite, 1636 S. Randall Road, will close by early April, employees at the Algonquin location told the Northwest Herald. Once the business closes, customers in the McHenry County area will not have another nearby specialty retailer that sells kid shoes and accessories, they said.
A final, closeout sale – with all items discounted 50 percent – is ongoing until the store closes its doors.
The employees wouldn’t comment on why the national chain decided to shutter the Algonquin location.
But executives at Michigan-based Wolverine Worldwide Inc., which acquired the Stride Rite brand in 2012, announced plans last fall to close an additional 25 Stride Rite locations throughout the country in 2016.
Wolverine Worldwide already had closed numerous Stride Rite locations, as part of a restructuring plan that resulted in 120 store closings from 2014 to 2015, according to the company’s quarterly filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
Its Performance + Lifestyle group, which includes the Stride Rite brand, saw revenue decline $27.3 million, or 9.8 percent, in the third quarter of 2015 compared to the same quarter the year before, Worldwide Wolverine reported last fall.
The company said in its SEC filing that Stride Rite closings and diminished demand for its remaining Stride Rite locations contributed to revenue losses for the brand during the third quarter.
Opening in 2005, the Stride Rite location in Algonquin was one of the original tenants to the Algonquin Commons shopping center, a main draw for consumers traveling along the Randall Road corridor.
Lately, though, the shopping center has seen a few longstanding businesses close. OfficeMax closed last May followed by PetSmart, which closed in December after nine years of business in the Algonquin Commons.
Discount retailer Gordman’s also left the center in 2015, but Art Van Furniture plans to occupy the 48,000-square-foot store later this spring.