Woolworth

NEW YORK -- In an announcement jarringly at odds with a corporate image straight out of a Norman Rockwell painting, the Woolworth Corp. said yesterday that its board had appointed a committee of outside directors to investigate allegations of accounting irregularities.The discount retailer also said it would restate its interim financial results for the fiscal year that ended Jan. 29 and might have to restate interim financial results for the previous fiscal year as well. It said it did not expect the adjustments to change full-year results for those years, but did not explain why."

Florence B. "Sissy" Cornish, a retired cafeteria cook and homemaker, died June 26, her 77th birthday, of kidney failure at Bradford Oaks Rehabilitation Center in Clinton. The former longtime Pigtown and Edmondson Village resident had lived in recent years in Upper Marlboro. Florence "Sissy" Boone was born and raised on Ostend Street in Pigtown. She attended city public schools. Until retiring in 1980, Mrs. Cornish was a cafeteria cook at the old Woolworth's on West Lexington Street in downtown Baltimore, where she had worked for many years.

NEW YORK -- Woolworth Corp. yesterday said it completed the sale of its 331-store Kids Mart/Little Folks division to an investor group for an undisclosed price.The investor group, LFS Acquisition Corp., is headed by Bernie Tessler, a former merchandising executive at Ames Department Stores Inc.Selling the nonstrategic Kids Mart unit is in line with the retailer's plans to focus financial and other resources in businesses that provide the best return, Woolworth said.Woolworth announced in May its plan to sell Kids Mart and Little Folks to the group headed by Mr. Tessler.

As a news reporter for many years of my working life, one of my most important resources was a pocketsize notebook I carried with me every day. It contained an almanac of sorts: the major news stories I had covered in prior years. I turned to it every day, and on many a slow news day, it bailed me out with good story ideas: the first anniversary of this, the 20th year since that, and so on. Recently, I found one of those old books and leafed through it. Before I knew it, an hour had passed.

A PAIR of socks, a snow scraper, a shot tower.He was downtown at Howard and Lexington. He'd come for Woolworth's.They were closing the store at 223 W. Lexington. The newspaper ad had said: "GOING OUT OF BUSINESS. EVERYTHING 80 PERCENT OFF. FINAL HOURS."It was his personal Woolworth. Six decades ago, he was there or near there six days a week.In the '30s, he'd worked at Hochschild's for $13 a week. He needed Woolworth.Now it seemed the thing to do. To go, stop there, take a look-in there.So he went in, and nothing was the same, yet much was. Or maybe it was only memory.

A five-alarm blaze that began in the linen department caused more than $1 million in damage yesterday to the Woolworth's store at Reisterstown Road Plaza and prompted the closing of most of the mall until tomorrow.No one was hurt in the fire, which was discovered about 9: 45 a.m. when a Woolworth's employee saw flames in the linen department.Smoke from the blaze prompted the evacuation of the mall. Except for Hechinger's, the 120-store mall will remain closed until tomorrow, according to Steven Erlanger, general manager of Reisterstown Road Plaza.

Woolworth Corp., the beefed-up and spread-out modern version of the corner five-and-dime store chain, resolved to slim down and shape up, as it announced plans yesterday to close, sell or revamp 900 "underperforming" stores nationwide. The program will involve nearly 10 percent of its 9,300 outlets worldwide and directly affect 10,000 employees.To pay for this "accelerated redeployment program," which comes on the heels of a disappointing holiday shopping season, Woolworth will ring up an after-tax charge against earnings of approximately $250 million, or $1.92 a share.

A man arrested yesterday in a disorderly conduct incident at a Northwest Baltimore Kmart was charged with setting the five-alarm Woolworth's store fire that closed Reisterstown Road Plaza on Saturday morning.Charged with arson was Gene Jerome Newton, 52, of the 4700 block of Park Heights Ave.Fire damage to the Woolworth's store was estimated at $1.3 million. Officials said the store would be closed for at least four to six weeks. Merchants elsewhere in the 120-store mall were cleaning up yesterday in preparation for its planned reopening at 10 a.m. today, said plaza general manager Steven Erlanger.

For the past six months, Fran Curran has been hauling deep-fat fryers and banana split glasses across Eastern Avenue.Finally she was able to tape a sign across the door of her new restaurant: "Open for business Monday April 25 -- 8 a.m."Curran had been the food service manager of the old Highlandtown F.W. Woolworth store before it closed its doors in January. Instead of searching for another job, or shedding tears over the demise of the five-and-dime's classic lunch counter, she decided to take a big risk, buy its equipment and open her own place.

Q. My investment adviser has been telling my wife and me to get out of retailing stocks. I would appreciate your opinion as to whether I should sell or hold my F.W. Woolworth Co. stock.A. Stocks like this one seem to nickel-and-dime their shareholders to death.You should hold your stock in F.W. Woolworth Co. (around $24 a share, New York Stock Exchange), the famous variety and apparel store chain, simply because its price is too cheap to make selling worthwhile right now, advised Daniel Barry, analyst with Kidder, Peabody & Co.One positive is that Woolworth's, which had 250 stores in West Germany, is expected to be the first retailer to expand into the remainder of the newly united Germany.

Greensboro, N.C.-- --Franklin McCain stood in a room at the Alumni-Foundation Event Center on the campus of North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University and told a group of reporters what he learned that winter day back in 1960. For years, civil rights lore has held that America learned much from McCain and his three North Carolina A&T classmates. On Feb. 1, 1960, McCain -- joined by David Richmond, Ezell Blair Jr. and Joseph McNeil -- took a seat at a segregated lunch counter in a Woolworth's in downtown Greensboro.

So now the big shots who run this town are looking for a "branding" slogan? How about "Baltimore: Who's Stealing Our Light Poles?" OK, we'll get to the whole slogan thing in a minute. But is this light-pole-stealing story wild or what? A gang of thieves is going around stealing 30-foot aluminum light poles? You don't think that makes Baltimore stand out? You don't think that sets us apart from other cities? Look, in other cities, the lowlifes are stealing cars and plasma TV's and expensive fur coats.

I MEET JOE Walsh at a coffee shop on Cold Spring Lane, where he is kind enough to spring for his coffee and my Snapple after the guy behind the counter announces, in effect: "We don' take no stinking credit cards." "Great, I don't got no stinking money," I say, slowly dying of embarrassment, whereupon Walsh walks in and saves the day by pulling out a few bucks. Believe me, I can be bought for a lot less. The fact is, we're meeting here because Walsh, 48, a professor of classics and history at Loyola College, has written an interesting book about Christmas called Were They Wise Men or Kings?

NEW YORK - Venator Group Inc. said yesterday that it's eliminating more than 3,000 jobs and closing 323 stores nationwide as the largest retailer of athletic shoes prepares to sell the money-losing Northern Group business. The store closings will cut about 700 full-time and 2,300 part-time positions, the company formerly known as Woolworth Corp. said in a statement. Venator also will trim its Northern Group corporate work force by 103 jobs to 173. The Northern Group's remaining 370 stores in Canada will be reorganized and sold.

Mid-Atlantic Realty Trust said at its annual meeting yesterday that it will launch renovations and expansion projects at two shopping centers in Baltimore and Harford counties.As part of the projects, a Super Fresh is to open as a new anchor grocery store at the Rosedale Plaza.Also, a Gap and Old Navy store will open at Harford Mall in October, the company said."These are two very significant transactions most REITs can't pull out of the bag," F. Patrick Hughes, president of the Lutherville-based real estate investment trust, told shareholders.

WOOLWORTH'S IN Harford Mall is one of the 400 being closed by the venerable chain, including 10 around Baltimore. It sits opposite Montgomery Ward, which declared bankruptcy to reorganize earlier this month. It is down the hall from a movie theater that's folding, in part because a 14-screen megaplex nearby.The busy intersection where Harford County's lone enclosed mall sits was a farm field two generations ago. Now, it mirrors the change being played out on the business pages and along commercial corridors everywhere.

Q. Do you think this is the right time to buy retailing stocks? I'd appreciate your opinion of F.W. Woolworth.A.Woolworth Corp. (around $28 a share, New York Stock Exchange) is no longer a nickel-and-dime investment.Besides the stores bearing its famous name, this company operates discount stores under 35 different names that include Woolco, Kinney, Foot Locker, Athletic X-Press and Richman.It's a good time to buy the company's shares, since they're attractively priced, advised Donald Trott, analyst with Dean Witter Reynolds.

Woolworth Corp. will shut all 260 of its Richman Brothers and Anderson Little stores -- which touted their "Made in America" suits and dresses -- within a year.The New York-based discount retail chain said the Richman Brothers and Anderson Little division, which has five stores and about 30 workers in Maryland, was a poor performer.Woolworth had been trying to sell the division since January but rejected the bids it received. On Thursday, the company decided to close the division."There has been a decline in demand for structured, tailored clothing such as men's suits and sportcoats.

Newt's army has given up on the plan to topple Bill and is going after Newt.Hechinger will be bolted on to Builders Square by professionals, not home craftsmen.The third chairman of the Joint Chiefs in a row not to have gone to a service academy is worse news for Annapolis and West Point than their scandals.Woolworth's is going the way of the nickel and dime.Pub Date: 7/21/97