After three years of visibly sluggish sales, At Home — which bills itself as the “Home and Holiday Décor Superstore” — will no longer make its home along the Green Line in St. Paul’s Midway, departing its perch in the Midway Marketplace by Sept. 12.
“Store Closing” and “Nothing Held Back” signs were posted throughout the store Friday, with paid sign holders on University Avenue advertising a closing sale.
Another At Home store will close in Syracuse, N.Y., by Aug. 1.
The big box home furnishings store was installed along St. Paul’s light rail corridor in 2021 following a $2 million remodel of a former Walmart. St. Paul’s only Walmart closed in September 2019, not long after Kraus-Anderson Realty purchased the Midway Marketplace strip mall that is also home to Cub Foods and a freestanding L.A. Fitness.
Despite easy access to the Green Line light rail, which opened exactly a decade ago on June 14, 2014, the St. Paul Midway business corridor has had a touch-and-go experience with retail tenants for years, in part due to changing shopping habits in the online era.
T.J. Maxx left the Midway Marketplace last October, after 10 years at the location. The Herberger’s department store in the marketplace closed in 2018 when parent company Bon-Ton Stores, Inc. was bought out of bankruptcy by liquidators, who shuttered all 250 of its Herberger’s locations nationally.
A spokesperson for Kraus-Anderson could not be immediately reached for comment on Friday. A representative from At Home store’s media office was not immediately available.
On Monday, July 8, the St. Paul Board of Zoning Appeals will hear a request from At Home stores to install a giant “CLOSING” banner measuring 160 square feet on the store’s facade for up to 45 days. Zoning rules would otherwise limit the banner to 32 square feet.
The neighboring Midway Shopping Center lost its grocery and strip mall retailers to construction of Allianz Field, the professional soccer stadium that hosts the Minnesota United, and later to the 2020 riots that followed the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis, as well as to the team owner’s efforts to clear out the “Snelling-Midway super block.”
Within the “super block,” plans call for a long-awaited new hotel, office building and restaurants along University Avenue, leading westward toward a giant loon sculpture to be installed at the corner of Snelling and University avenues. The ribbon-cutting for P.K.’s Place, a new all-abilities outdoor playground along the stadium’s east wall, is scheduled from 3:30-5:30 p.m. Thursday.
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