Boise Towne Square Is Losing It’s 4th Store In 3 Months

Boise Towne Square has been going through some changes lately. If the mall was a friend, you might say, "Wow, you've lost weight!" But the mall isn't a person, and losing stores isn't anything like losing pounds around the waistline.

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The announcement that Forever 21 is closing its only Idaho location marks the fourth retailer inside Boise's lone mall to close. In addition to Forever 21, Kohl's and Volcom have announced their departures, and Papi Churro's closure leaves a void in the Food Court.

There was a lot of hope that the retail apocalypse wouldn't affect smaller cities in rural states like Idaho. Maybe this was wishful thinking by people in cities like New York who thought that "these simple-minded rural folk" wouldn't ever figure out how to shop online. Well, guess what? We get the Internet in Idaho, too, and shopping online is just as easy here as it is in Manhattan.

That retail apocalypse is a real thing that started in 2020, long before the pandemic. It's just that the pandemic accelerated it. While rural states may not have been a part of the first wave of closures, it's definitely caught up to us now. J. Crew, JCPenney, Tuesday Morning, Neiman Marcus, Lord & Taylor, and Pier 1 all filed for bankruptcy between 2020 and 2021. Some of those companies were able to restructure, and some of them just closed. The ones that restructured had to make some tough decisions. The business couldn't stay the same, so they had to reduce the number of stores they owned. Recently, Boise has seen those kinds of closures.

The Forever 21 situation is a little different. They are now in their second bankruptcy and closing 200 stores. Idaho isn't exactly the strongest place for them. They only have one location, so pulling out of the Gem State was a relatively easy decision.