WESTWOOD—It might be called an infamous claim to fame: the self-described Hub of the Pascack Valley may soon host the Garden State’s sole surviving Kmart discount store, in Westwood Plaza at 700 Broadway.
The only other Kmart store now open in New Jersey is in Avenel, in Middlesex County; it’s being liquidated, scheduled to close April 17, said company officials, of Transform Holdco LLC, based in Hoffman Estates, Ill.
And when it closes, Westwood’s Kmart, open for business six days per week (closed Sundays), 9 a.m. to 7 p.m., will be one of only three remaining in the continental United States, along with stores at Bridgehampton on Long Island, N.Y., and Miami, Fla.
There’s one Kmart in Guam, one in Puerto Rico, and four in the U.S. Virgin Islands.
It’s not clear how long Westwood’s will hang on, or what will follow in the plaza.
“The Borough has had no correspondence from the Kmart property owners regarding their current or future intentions,” Mayor Ray Arroyo told us March 14.
He said that to the best of his knowledge the plaza’s property’s manager, Hekemian & Co. Inc. of Hackensack, had not filed any use variance applications for the property nor requested its rezoning.
Efforts to contact Craig Kerbekian, Hekemian’s property manager for Westwood Plaza, were not returned by press time.
Arroyo, a Republican, expanded on his thoughts in a Facebook post March 16. He noted the borough’s Master Plan, revisited two years ago, recommended additional commercial uses be permitted in the Shopping Center zone.
He also sounded a warning: “Residents should know that Assembly bill A-1294, currently in committee, would overrule local zoning and allow developers of qualifying office parks and shopping centers to redevelop with residential mixed use … as of-right.”
(Editor’s note: An earlier version of this story erroneously gave the bill as A-294. We apologize for any confusion this caused.)
He said, “No use variance would need issue. The bill, if passed by the legislature and signed into law by Gov. Murphy, would override local zoning prohibitions and preferences. It would treat all subject office parks and shopping centers, everywhere in the state, as ‘distressed properties.’”
And, he said, “It establishes, by statute, a residential component as a permitted use, to relieve that distress.”
The state League of Municipalities opposes the bill, he said.
Commenters expressed concern and complained of the deteriorated parking lot. Arroyo advised complaining to the borough’s property maintenance office.
When Westwood Plaza opened, in 1982, Kmart was an anchor tenant, along with Grand Union supermarket, where TJMaxx is now. This fall is Kmart’s 40th year there.
The store, which now has its wares consolidated in a smaller, sparer display area, giving the store a feeling of unused space, has outlasted many neighbors, including Hallmark, women’s clothing retailer Mandee, Petland Discounts, and Radio Shack.
With the explosive growth of online merchandising and sales, major large box discount retailers have been in decline for years. Kmart closed stores in Wayne, Trenton and Wall in 2019, and stores in Belleville and Kearny closed last spring.
According to the Philadelphia Inquirer, Kmart at its peak operated about 2,400 stores in the 1990s, employing about 350,000 people in the United States and Canada.
— With John Snyder