(Filed Under Financial and General Interest News). Nordstrom, Inc. announced plans to close a downtown Indianapolis store due to weak sales caused by a second Nordstrom location that opened in 2008.

The 216,000-square foot store, located at the Circle Centre Mall, opened September 8, 1995 and will close to the public on July 31, 2011. The company will continue to operate the second Nordstrom location at The Fashion Mall at Keystone Crossing and will open a new Nordstrom Rack store at The Shops at Rivers Edge in September 2011.

Nordstrom, Inc. President Erik Nordstrom arrived from the company’s Seattle headquarters to notify the store’s 176 employees of the closing. "This has been an extremely difficult decision that we’ve wrestled with for some time because we care a lot about our employees, our customers and this community," Nordstrom said. "We’ve enjoyed serving our customers in downtown Indianapolis, but unfortunately our business has declined over the long term for some time, and despite our efforts to turn things around, we don’t see the outlook significantly changing."

Ninety-seven of the store’s 176 employees will be offered positions at the nearby Nordstrom locations. "We have a fantastic team at Circle Centre and we are fortunate that we’ll be able to offer many of them jobs at our Keystone store and our new Shops at Rivers Edge Rack," Nordstrom said. Employees who stay with the company until it closes but aren’t offered positions at the other locations will be given a severance package.

Sales at the Circle Centre store had fallen by almost half since the Keystone store opened, a dramatic decline that Nordstrom said company officials didn’t anticipate.

"We have multiple stores in many markets," Nordstrom stated. "It’s very rare for us to close a store."

Nordstrom, Inc., was founded in 1901 and has 214 stores in 29 states.

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Published 06-01-2011 by Katherine Rautenberg