Apple store at MacArthur Center mall in Norfolk to close

Norfolk — Apple Inc. confirmed late Thursday evening it plans to close its store at the MacArthur Center mall in downtown Norfolk, but didn’t say when.

An emailed statement from the company noted that Hampton Roads customers could visit its remaining store at the Lynnhaven Mall in Virginia Beach, as well as shop online.

“While we have made the difficult decision to close our store at MacArthur Center, we are pleased to be able to offer all of our team members other jobs within Apple,” according to the statement, first reported by macrumors.com. While no date was provided, the closure isn’t expected to be imminent and customers likely will be notified well in advance. In October, Apple confirmed it would permanently close its Uptown store in Minneapolis. Many of its locations have been temporarily closed because of pandemic concerns and restrictions.

Apple, a sought-after mall tenant, opened at MacArthur Center in September 2006, and didn’t open its second location at Lynnhaven until 2014. It’s one of just nine Apple stores in Virginia and 270 across 44 states and Washington. The nearest location, after Virginia Beach, is Short Pump Town Center in Richmond.

For years, MacArthur — which opened in 1999 and became a prestige shopping destination in the region — avoided the large storefront vacancies seen at other malls as department stores contracted. That began to change in 2019. Apple is the latest high-profile store to leave MacArthur after a string of notable departures, well before the COVID-19 pandemic kept more people at home to shop online.

In early 2019, the mall’s coveted upscale anchor Nordstrom closed its three-level space. The retailer’s revenue in Norfolk hadn’t kept pace with locations elsewhere. The vacant space, owned by the city of Norfolk in a unique arrangement since the mall’s beginning, has yet to be filled. The rest of the mall is owned by Starwood Property Trust, which pays annual rent to the city for the ground it sits on. A two-level Forever 21 closed the same year after the trendy clothing retailer filed for bankruptcy protection. Banana Republic, Williams-Sonoma and Pottery Barn didn’t renew leases.

By the end of 2019, Starwood Property Trust had defaulted on a $750 million loan it sought in 2014 that used MacArthur and three other malls as collateral. An appraisal at the time valued all four at $1.07 billion, according to information from Trepp LLC, which tracks commercial real estate and securitized mortgages. As of December 2019, a new appraisal pinned their value at $366.7 million. By the time the loan came due, Starwood still owed more than $680 million. Wells Fargo was installed as a special servicer on the loan and Jones Lang LaSalle was brought in to manage the mall. Ambitious plans introduced in early 2018 to expand the mall’s footprint on city-owned land to include a hotel, apartments, restaurants and entertainment have long been dormant.

The store departures continued last year. J.Crew, watch-seller Fossil and jewelry store Brighton Collectibles left after their leases were up in January 2020. They were followed by Men’s Warehouse and J.Jill. The Walking Company and Francesca’s, both involved in bankruptcy cases, also closed late last year. Clothing retailer Express was gone earlier this year. Victoria’s Secret left, too. Its lease was up on Dec. 31.

The mall’s largest remaining tenant is the Dillard’s department store housed in 253,616 square feet of the 927,692-square-foot mall. Regal Cinemas is second, occupying 80,210 square feet. The movie theater chain, which hasn’t reopened any of its theaters since temporarily closing them in October, extended its lease at the mall in early 2020 by two years, through Jan. 31, 2022, according to data from Trepp.