Bed Bath & Beyond Files For Bankruptcy, Closing Hundreds Of Stores
Bed Bath & Beyond announced Sunday that it filed for bankruptcy, stating that they will be closing its remaining 360 Bed Bath & Beyond stores and 120 buybuy Baby locations. Within the past year the company has closed around 400 stores.
Chain department stores such as TJ Maxx and HomeGoods have begun deals to take over the retail spaces, as well as gyms. The vast spaces of Bed Bath & Beyond stores offer a unique opportunity for commercial real estate.
“E-commerce scared a lot of people off from building retail,” said Brandon Isner, the head of retail research at CBRE, a commercial real estate firm, to CNN.
“A lot of great real estate is going to come available into a market where there’s been no vacancies. It will not take long for retailers to occupy those spaces.”
“For us, the biggest source of new store locations comes from other retailers closing stores. So many of our most productive locations were formerly Circuit City or Toys ‘R’ Us or Sports Authority,” Burlington CEO Michael O’Sullivan said.
New commercial real estate construction has decreased vastly within the last couple of years, and retail store spaces have also been scarce, so the availability of these large building spaces could be a new opportunity for major retailers.
Bed Bath & Beyond has stores in all 50 states, a majority of them are in the most populated areas of the country. A majority of the stores are also located in large cities and mid-size suburbs. These are all good qualities for retailers looking to expand their spaces in a prime location.
“There is good interest for Bed Bath & Beyond stores that are closing given desirable locations and an average size of around 30,000 square feet,” retail analysts from Telsey Advisory Group said.
“In some cases, landlords are also eager to replace old Bed Bath & Beyond leases because the company was paying below-market rent in certain locations,” Telsey Advisory Group analysts said.
“Bed Bath and Beyond sites are interesting to us, and we are exploring available opportunities with our franchisees,” a spokesperson told CNN.
Eric Mastrota is a Contributing Editor at The National Digest based in New York. A graduate of SUNY New Paltz, he reports on world news, culture, and lifestyle. You can reach him at eric.mastrota@thenationaldigest.com.