Business & Tech

City Sports to Expand Into Closed Talbots at Suburban Square

The retailer is bringing a new iPad-oriented fitness "concept" to the space.

Second in a series about changes at Suburban Square in Ardmore.

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, nestled in the midst of ’s courtyard in Ardmore, will be taking over the large space vacated just last week by , the women’s clothier that is closing more than 100 of its stores nationwide.

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“City Sports has an amazing new concept store and they are going to use that same concept here,” said , Suburban Square’s general manager. “It’s going to be an upgrade to what they could do here because they were limited with the square footage.”

The Talbots space means another 10,000 square feet for City Sports, which will take the keys to the space within the next week.

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, in Washington D.C., about a new City Sports opened there as a “flagship” location, indicates the kind of “concept store” that Bachus spoke of.

“Lockers located in the rear are dedicated for local running club use with an energy bar and refreshment stand nearby. Instead of the traditional sneaker wall, City Sports created a curved stand alone display, one side for women, one for men.”

A Washington area City Sports marketing vice president was wowed by the architectural elements of its new space in Georgetown, a sentiment that jibes with the clean Art Deco look of Suburban Square, combined with the latter's retro-yet-green outdoor spaces around the courtyard (currently under renovation) and the general, outdoor, town square feel of the place.

Center City Philadelphia’s City Sports also was recently re-launched, in a similar fashion—as a cutting-edge, tech-oriented, meet-up sort of space, perfect for 5K regulars who tweet while jogging, say.

The Georgetown and Philadelphia stores include iPad stations “where customers can look for local bike trails or find the next triathlon,” the Georgetown Patch article said. “Next to the inside front entrance is a nook where customers can secure their bikes to an indoor bike rack, safe from the vagaries of the street.”

Bachus said Talbots did well in its prime spot in Suburban Square, which generally enjoys very high occupancy rates. But he seemed happy with the trade-off, especially since there has been only news of closures of late at the shopping center: , and . The old Brookstone spot next to the remains empty, too.

Talbots was the latest in that string of closures.

“There’s not really a big concern,” Bachus said. “For the spaces that we do have [open], we have interest in every single one of them.”


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