Macy's will close 14 stores across the country in the first half of this year, including two California locations, as the department store chain continues a sweeping contraction that has already eliminated dozens of locations since 2024.
The latest round of closures spans at least ten states, from Georgia to Washington, and marks another step in a plan the company announced in 2024 to shutter 150 underperforming stores by the end of 2026. Two of the locations on the chopping block sit in California, one at the Grossmont Center in La Mesa and another at the West Valley Mall in Tracy, the New York Post reported.
The retailer, founded in 1858, has already shuttered 66 stores in 2025 alone, including one in Los Angeles. The 14 new closures push the chain deeper into a retrenchment that tells a plain story about the state of brick-and-mortar retail in America.
One store already has a firm date: the Macy's at Pittsburgh Mills Mall in Tarentum, Pennsylvania, will close its doors on April 26, as TribLive and WTAE reported. The remaining locations are set to close sometime in the first half of this year, though the company has not published exact dates for each.
Beyond the two California stores and the Pennsylvania location, the closures reach into communities large and small:
That list, combined with the two California stores and the Pennsylvania location, accounts for the 14 closures the company has identified so far. The Desert Sun first identified the two California locations slated to close.
Macy's announced its broader restructuring plan in 2024, the same year Tony Spring took over as CEO. The company said at the time that it would close 150 underperforming stores by the end of 2026, a figure that represents roughly 30 percent of the chain. The stated goal: cut costs, concentrate resources on high-performing locations, and invest in luxury brands and digital shopping.
The company revealed that closures would be announced on a rolling basis as it evaluates regional store performance. That means more announcements are coming. It remains unclear when Macy's plans to reveal the final wave of closures before the end of this calendar year.
With 66 stores already gone in 2025 and 14 more on the way, the pace is brisk. Simple math says the company needs to close roughly 80 more locations by December 2026 to hit the 150-store target, assuming the count is cumulative. That leaves a lot of communities still waiting to learn whether their local Macy's will survive.
The two California closures, La Mesa and Tracy, add to a pattern that Golden State residents know well. Macy's already closed a Los Angeles location as part of the 2025 wave. For communities anchored by aging malls, the loss of a department store anchor tenant can accelerate a broader decline in foot traffic and local tax revenue.
La Mesa's Grossmont Center and Tracy's West Valley Mall are exactly the kind of mid-market suburban retail centers that have struggled to compete with online shopping and shifting consumer habits. When the anchor tenant leaves, the smaller stores that depend on that traffic often follow.
California's regulatory environment, high minimum wages, stringent labor rules, elevated commercial rents, and persistent retail theft, does not make the state an easy place to operate a department store on thin margins. Macy's has not publicly cited those factors in its closure decisions, but the pattern speaks for itself: the state keeps appearing on the list.
Macy's is not alone. The broader department store model has been under siege for more than a decade. But the scale of this retreat, 150 stores in roughly two years, reflects something more than a cyclical downturn. It reflects a business that concluded nearly a third of its physical locations could not justify their existence.
The company's pivot toward luxury brands and digital experiences may be a rational corporate strategy. But it is cold comfort for the workers, small-business neighbors, and communities that built their commercial lives around these stores. A Macy's closing in Corpus Christi or Saint Cloud or Amherst does not just remove a place to buy clothes. It removes a commercial anchor that drew people to the surrounding shops and restaurants.
CEO Tony Spring inherited a company that needed surgery. Whether the 150-store plan amounts to a successful restructuring or a managed decline will depend on whether the surviving locations and digital channels can generate enough revenue to sustain what remains. The rolling nature of the announcements, no master list, no firm calendar, keeps employees and communities in a state of uncertainty that benefits the company's flexibility but not the people who depend on these jobs.
Macy's has not disclosed exact closing dates for most of the 14 stores. It has not said when the next round of closures will be announced. And it has not detailed how many employees will be affected at each location or what severance or transition support, if any, will be offered. The rolling-basis approach gives the company room to manage the news cycle, but it leaves workers and local officials guessing.
When a 167-year-old American institution decides that nearly a third of its stores are not worth keeping open, the problem is bigger than one company's balance sheet. It is a verdict on the places those stores served, and on the policies that made serving them unprofitable.
