Nordstrom Santa Barbara Paseo Nuevo to close by August
SANTA BARBARA, Calif. - Nordstrom, Paseo Nuevo Mall's longtime anchor department store of three decades, is closing for good.
We received several tips Thursday and by the evening, Nordstrom's corporate office at its Seattle, WA headquarters responded to our newsroom inquiry with the following statement:
Our goal is to best position ourselves to serve customers in each market where we operate. Because of the impacts COVID-19 has had on our business, we need to take a critical look at the physical footprint of our stores to determine which we will continue to operate. To respond to the impacts of COVID-19 and ensure we’re able to continue serving customers well into the future, we will be closing 16 of our fleet of full-line stores, including Nordstrom Tyler, Nordstrom Santa Barbara Paseo Nuevo and Nordstrom Montclair Place. We selected these 16 stores based on a variety of factors, including the unique needs of the market, the current state of our business and real estate agreements.
We will not reopen these stores to the public and anticipate all 16 of these stores will be closed by August 2020. These types of decisions are never easy because we realize what this means for our employees. We’re committed to taking care of them as best we can, including providing support and resources through this transition.
Nordstrom's opening in 1990 coincided with the launch of the Paseo Nuevo outdoor mall on State Street and quickly became the go-to spot for upscale shoppers looking for new clothes, accessories and outfits for special events, from weddings and bar mitzvahs to the Santa Barbara International Film Festival and Fiesta, among many others.
A longtime valued employee, who did not want to be named, wanted to express their love for the store and what it has meant for community shoppers for decades. The employee believed that Nordstrom executives should rethink their decision as closing the beloved department store will leave a retail void from Thousand Oaks to San Jose.
"It more than saddens me to see that they don't see the need and value of having the one and only department store that you could go into and be treated like family. How can they take that away from our communities?"
The employee said Nordstrom executives cited years of poor numbers at both the department store and the entire Paseo Nuevo mall and neighboring shops.
