Vans closing in Philly while Abercrombie moving in

The Vans location cost the company about $231,300 in payroll to about a dozen employees, between November 2023 and 2024. The company estimated that about $7,621 in local tax revenue will be lost as the result of the closure, but did not specify whether that was a monthly or annual figure.

Vans are still sold across Philadelphia, mostly inside other general department stores, such as Nordstrom Rack at 17th and Chestnut streets. Likewise, there are still Vans and North Face retail stores in King of Prussia Mall.

In May 2020, the previous Vans shop on Walnut Street near the same intersection caught on fire during social unrest after the murder of George Floyd by police in Minnesota. The historic building, which also had Dr. Martens shoes and a McDonalds, was razed and has since reopened as a beer garden.

What’s next for retail in the city?

The commercial corridor that includes Walnut Street has been the focus of a pedestrian-only shopping experiment through the Center City District known as Open Streets as one way to boost retail sales.

Even on an unseasonably warm day in late December around lunchtime, the shopping district was bustling with visitors popping in and out of stores.

Center City neighborhoods have added more full-time residents — about 75,000 people — which has increased demand for retailers in the past decade. For example, there are approximately 50 retail storefronts along Walnut Street between 15th and 19th streets.

And that’s where brands want their physical stores to be, said David Patterson, associate partner of Clarkston Consulting, which works on retail brand strategies for clients.

“Brands want to be where their customers are and as great as the digital world is and omnipresent that it is, the physical space [for retail stores] is not going anywhere,” he said.

Sometimes that means more experiments in retail, he said.

“We’ve seen kind of fits and starts with the brands experimenting with showrooming,” he said about the practice of using a physical store as a taste of what the business sells, rather than stock all its products for immediate sale. “Showrooming does a lot from a cost optimization standpoint in terms of lowering the amount of inventory you need to carry in a store, really relying on central points of distribution and allowing customers to experience your product, touch and feel the garment they may want to buy.”