December 16, 2011
The HomeGoods store in Fields Corner is closing its doors in January 2012, less than a year after it was converted from an A.J. Wright store. The move will leave a gaping hole in the Geneva Ave. shopping mall, where the store is an anchor tenant.
TJX, the Framingham-based company that owns the HomeGoods chain, said earlier this year that they were closing down their A.J. Wright stores and turning them into HomeGoods stores. A.J. Wright, a popular store in the area, sold clothes, while HomeGoods sold furniture.
“We are always assessing and reviewing our real estate strategies and our decision to close the Fields Corner HomeGoods store is in line with that thinking,” Doreen Thompson, vice president of corporate communications at TJX Companies, Inc., said in an email. “We intend to continue funding the charities that the Company has supported including Dorchester Academy, Brookview House, Fields Corner Main Street and STRIVE/Boston Employment Service, among others. We are grateful for the patronage of our HomeGoods customers in the Fields Corner area and believe they will continue to find great values at our nearby stores.”
Evelyn Darling, the director of Fields Corner Main Street, said she hopes another clothing retailer takes the now-vacant spot, citing a need for such a store in the neighborhood.
"We knew that the store sales were not what they had hoped they would be," she said of HomeGoods. She said there was not much outreach from the store to the neighborhood.
Darling also said she is talking with the Boston Redevelopment Authority about installing a sign someplace on Park St. to better promote the stores in the shopping mall.
The mall, which has a Supreme Liquors store and a McDonald's, has some 239,000 square feet of retail space.
EDIT: The story was updated 3:10 p.m. Monday with comments from Fields Corner Main St.