The J.C. Penney store in Salina's Central Mall is one of the company's three stores in Kansas that are being closed.
The other Kansas locations are in Emporia and Liberal. The closings are a part of the company's store optimazation strategey and were announced today.
"Following a comprehensive evaluation of its retail footprint and a careful analysis of store performance and future strategic fit for the company, JCPenney identified the first phase of 154 store closures. Following entry of an order at the June 11, 2020, hearing with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of Texas, in Corpus Christi, Texas, store closing sales will begin at 154 locations," the company noted in a news release issued today.
"The company expects additional phases of store closing sales will begin in the coming weeks. As the company remains focused on its Plan for Renewal and driving sustainable, profitable growth, it intends to reduce its store footprint and focus resources on its strongest stores and powerful eCommerce flagship store, jcp.com. Store closing sales for the first round of store closures are expected to take 10-16 weeks to complete," the news release continued.
J.C. Penney has been a a retail fixture in Salina for more than 100 years, first in downtown Salina and then as the south anchor store at Salina's Central Mall. Additionally, Sams Chapel at Kansas Wesleyan University is named in honor of the parents of E.C. Sams, who donated $25,000 toward the construction of the Pioneer Hall-Sams Chapel building. As an adult, E.C. Sams, who was from Simpson, Kan., became the business partner of James Cash Penney.
A 21-year-old Penney was on a Union Pacific train in the summer of 1897, headed for Colorado and a drier climate in the hopes of getting over "a nagging bronchial cough," David Delbert Kruger wrote in Earl Corder Sams and the Rise of J.C. Penney.
"As the train stopped in Salina, Penney could not have foreseen the impact a teenage farm boy in nearby Simpson would ultimately have on his future, not to mention the stores and company that would someday bear his name. And young Earl Corder Sams could never have imagined how much J. C. Penney, the man and eventually the company, would change his own life, much less the lives of countless Americans. A decade later, fate would bring these two young men together in Wyoming, creating a working synergy that would transform Penney’s fledgling enterprise from a two-store mercantile establishment out west to a national retailer headquartered in New York City, with over sixteen hundred department stores across the United States. In the end, Earl Corder Sams would become far more than a business partner to James Cash Penney: he would quietly lead the J. C. Penney Company on the path to becoming a national department store chain and recruit fellow Kansans to join him in its incredible ascension, while bringing a J. C. Penney department store to the main streets of eighty Kansas towns," Kruger wrote.
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To read Kruger's Earl Corder Sams and the Rise of J.C. Penney on the Kansas State Historical Society's website, click here.