Thursday, May 09, 2013

Beans Last Days

Thirteen years ago, at The Rouse Company annual shareholders meeting, Tony Deering announced that catalog retailer LL Bean would be opening its first ever retail (non-outlet) store at The Mall. The story goes that this announcement upstaged the retailers own plans to break the news. To show their displeasure at this preemptive PR strike by a real estate developer, LL Bean went ahead and opened their Tysons Corner store first.

Despite this corporate silliness, LL Bean opened its Columbia store in May of 2001, a few months after Tysons Corner. This Sunday, after twelve years selling khakis and canoes to HoCo locos, the Columbia store will close. By midsummer the 30,000 square foot building that housed them will be gone, replaced by a new plaza and a reopening of the old main entrance.

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