Carson’s plans a spring return to Orland Park, opening in a former furniture store near Orland Square Mall, according to a company official.
The chain’s Chicago-area locations closed this year after Carson’s parent company, Bon-Ton Stores Inc., was unable to find a buyer for Carson’s and other department stores it operated.
Carson’s was one of the anchors at Orland Square Mall, northeast of LaGrange Road and 151st Street, and Bon-Ton closed that store and a nearby furniture store at 66 Orland Square Drive. The 63,000-square-foot furniture store is immediately east of the mall.
An Indiana company, CSC Generation Holdings, had bought the intellectual property of Bon-Ton Stores Inc. during Bon-Ton’s bankruptcy proceedings, and on Black Friday reopened a Carson’s in Evergreen Park, on Western Avenue south of 95th Street, and said it had plans to reopen other vacant Carson’s locations, including Orland Park.
The company has signed a lease to open in Orland Park and also has plans to reopen in Chicago Ridge, according to Dylan Astle, a company official.
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CSC owns and operates membership buying service DirectBuy, based in Merrillville, Ind., which enables members to buy products, such as furniture, appliances and electronics, at a discount.
In reopening the Evergreen Park Carson’s, CSC said it has trimmed operating hours to better align with shoppers’ preferences, and has a large area set aside for customers to make online purchases.
After buying Bon-Ton’s intellectual property for $900,000 in September, CSC quickly got the retailer’s e-commerce sites back online and promised the reopening of physical stores would follow.
Carson’s had been a longtime anchor at malls in Evergreen Park and Orland Park, and had been a fixture at Lincoln Mall in Matteson. The Matteson location abruptly closed in March prior to the wholesale closing of all remaining stores when Bon-Ton was in bankruptcy.