Gap closing at Coral Ridge Mall

Eastern Iowans wanting to shop at the Gap soon will have to travel to Ames, Davenport, or the apparel chain's outlet store in Williamsburg.

The Gap store at Coral Ridge Mall in Coralville will be shutting its doors on Jan. 26. The closing comes seven years after the Gap closed its store in Lindale Mall.

'We hope to announce a new tenant for that space in the first quarter of 2016,” said Monica Nadeau, Coral Ridge general manager. We're very sorry to see Gap closing. The store was one of our original tenants when the mall opened in 1998.”

The Gap in June announced that it would be closing 140 stores and cutting 250 corporate jobs, primarily in New York and San Francisco, in the current fiscal year as part of a plan to improve the brand name and profitability of the company. The closures are part of a plan to shutter 175 specialty stores in North America over the next few years.

Gap will continue to operate about 500 Gap stores, plus 300 outlet stores. The company said the Gap outlet store in the Tanger Factory Outlet Center in Williamsburg will not be affected by the closures.

Gap expects to lose about $300 million in sales due to the store closures and incur one-time costs of $140 million to $160 million on things like lease buyouts and writing off inventory.

Gap Inc. also owns Old Navy, which operates a store at 345 Collins Road NE in Cedar Rapids' Northland Square. The chain also has Old Navy stores in Coral Ridge Mall, Merle Hay Mall in Des Moines and Jordan Creek Town Center in West Des Moines as well as an outlet store in the Tanger Factory Outlet Center in Williamsburg.

Gap Inc. on Dec. 3 reported that November 2015 net sales decreased 9 percent compared with a 6 percent increase last year. On a constant currency basis, November 2015 net sales decreased 8 percent compared with last year.

Net sales for the four-week period that ended on Nov. 28 were $1.57 billion compared with net sales of $1.72 billion for the four-week period that ended on Nov. 29, 2014.