HomeGoods is scheduled to open Thursday, 1½ years after the retailer got the keys to the former Office Depot space at the southwest corner of the DeVargas Center.
The pandemic slowed things, and HomeGoods prefers opening stores in spring or fall. Thus a scheduled fall 2020 opening was delayed until March, said Katy Fitzgerald, senior project manager at Fidelis Realty Partners, which owns the downtown Santa Fe mall.
The main HomeGoods sign went up Tuesday, and a secondary exterior sign was installed Wednesday, she said.
“This cements us for any local or major national tenant that is interested in Santa Fe,” Fitzgerald said. “It took us nine years to get this deal. TJ Maxx was hellbent on this location.”
TJX Companies, or TJ Maxx, is the parent company of HomeGoods, which describes itself as “by far the largest off-price, home fashions retailer in the U.S.,” with about 750 stores. HomeGoods offers an eclectic assortment of home fashions, including furniture, rugs, lighting, decorative accessories and cookware, among other departments, according to the 2019 TJX annual reports.
“We have wonderful local shops but this is an addition of merchandise we don’t have,” Fitzgerald said. “I think they will crush it with sales in this location. They know it.”
HomeGoods fills 22,000 square feet and becomes an anchor tenant for DeVargas.
Santa Fe Coldwell Banker commercial real estate agent Micah Ortega weighed both sides of a national retailer coming to Santa Fe.
“I’m concerned with the mom and pop stores struggling because of this COVID,” Ortega said. “It has two sides to it. You have the national stores and the local stores. It’s good on a macro level to bring people to town, but it’s the charm of the local stores that attracts tourists. The locals want the chains, and the tourists want the local stores.”
Fitzgerald believes HomeGoods will bring many more shoppers to DeVargas, not just for the new kid on the block but to check out other stores in the predominantly locally occupied mall.
“We have never had anything comparable to HomeGoods,” she said.
The HomeGoods for DeVargas Center was announced in October 2018. A lease was signed in summer 2019 but work inside the store couldn’t start until September 2019 after Office Depot cleared out and moved to the other side of the mall.
Fitzgerald also announced an opening at DeVargas in a few months of Restore, an Austin, Texas, hyper-wellness and cryotherapy company. Restore will fill the former Life Vessel storefront next to Four Seasons Sunrooms and Mattress Firm. Quintana Optical will move from its location into an 1,100-square-foot spot across from mall’s post office.
