Nearly a year after J. C. Penney opened as Marley Station Mall's third anchor, another national department store has arrived.
Sears, Roebuck and Co. began building a two-level, 197,000-square-foot store and automotive center this week. It will be the fourth anchor and the second department store built at the mall since Marley Station opened in 1987. Macy's and Hecht's are the other anchors.
Marley Station "has a very strong family orientation, and we want that to continue," said Ed Ladd, general manager. "If you can think of an all-American family store, you think of Sears."
The new store is a boon for Marley Station, but some county business leaders, Sears employees and Marley Station merchants say it could mean the death of one or both of the other Sears stores in the area.
The Sears in Glen Burnie has about 90,000 square feet, and the one in the Annapolis area has about 50,000 square feet.
"You would not generally see that many square feet of Sears to serve that size of a market," said Rene Daniel of The Daniel Group, a Towson consultant to shopping centers. "It doesn't seem to be something Sears has done in the Baltimore-Washington area."
Sears spokeswoman Linda Blakley said the company has not studied how the new store would affect sales at its Glen Burnie store five miles up Ritchie Highway from Marley Station, or at its other area store 15 miles south in Parole Plaza.
Sears officials said they chose Marley Station because of its Ritchie Highway location and access to Route 100. The store also will sport a new look as part of the retailer's five-year, $4 billion plan to reshape its image from a mass merchandiser to a full-line department store that carries fashionable clothing.
"It's not your mother's Sears store," Ms. Blakley said.
The store is expected to open in the fall of 1996. A Sears of comparable size usually adds 400 jobs to an area, Ms. Blakley said.
As part of its companywide change, Sears has been renovating or closing old stores. The Annapolis and Glen Burnie stores, both built in the early 1960s, aren't on the company's list of stores to be renovated this year, Ms. Blakley said.
For merchants at Marley Station, which has several empty storefronts, the new Sears is good news.
Melanie Johnson, co-owner of Koenig Art Emporium, said her store survives on mall traffic but that there hasn't been much walk-in business.
"A lot of what we're geared up to is mall traffic," said Ms. Johnson, whose shop is several doors from the proposed Sears. "With stores closing around us, it's hurt us. The more anchors the better. The more large stores you have, the more that helps the stores in between."
Some Marley Station chain stores hope Sears will help them edge out the competition at Annapolis Mall.
"We were doing real well until last November, when we had a store open in Annapolis Mall," said Darla Vestal, manager at Lechters, which sells kitchen gadgets. "I used to have customers coming from Annapolis."
Ed Kennedy, a 30-year Glen Burnie resident and president of the Northern Anne Arundel Chamber of Commerce, said he hopes the Sears in Glen Burnie will stay.
"For me, it's just a nice comfortable place to go," he said. "In my opinion, a lot of people from Glen Burnie don't go to Marley Station. Sears would be losing a lot of folks."
