Downtown Tacoma clothing store to close after 15 years because of COVID-19 impacts
Clothing store UrbanXchange announced Tuesday in an Instagram post it would be closing after a 15-year run.
It felt like the right moment to close with “the combination of uncertain times due to the pandemic and our lease term expiring this year,” according to the post.
Located in downtown Tacoma, the store featuring vintage and modern thrift items is owned by the husband-wife duo Nick and Brooke Casanova.
“We’ve only known for sure this was the route we were going for the past week or so,” Brooke Casanova told The News Tribune.
The two came to the conclusion that staying open was only putting off the inevitable.
“If it didn’t happen now, it would have been the end of the year probably,” Brooke Casanova said. “In current circumstances of the pandemic, sooner than later was what we felt would be best for us.”
They had planned to get back up and running, but it wasn’t to be.
“We were going to try to bring back staff,” Brooke Casanova said. “It didn’t really seem like we could open fully, and they were concerned about working.
“It’s kind of like we started this business all over from scratch. It’s a tough thing to do and to rebuild that, especially in downtown Tacoma.”
Challenges included the looming loss of customers and the likelihood the store would see only a fraction of the business it typically got in the busiest months amid the COVID-19 crisis.
“Summer is supposed to be one of our busiest times of the year. There is so much foot traffic, people out and about, people staying at the hotels, going to museums, going to concerts at the Tacoma dome,” Brooke Casanova said. “There is just a lot of activity down here, and I don’t imagine that’s coming back in the next six months to a year. It puts a financial burden on our store at that point.”
There is a planned “re-opening” set in July when everything will be half off, in addition to sidewalk and online sales. The official last day is Aug. 16 when the doors shut for the last time.
“A lot of the business owners down here on Pac Ave, the majority of us are in the same boat in a sense of we are barely taking a paycheck if any from our businesses,” Nick Casanova said. “Knowing that we’re going to be stepping into a market, a reality that is going to look 100 percent different from six months ago, we don’t have that luxury.
“Signing a lease with those sorts of questions, it just did not seem like the smartest thing to do when retail in Tacoma is already extremely hard to be successful at. In this climate, it’s going to be substantially even harder.”
This story was originally published June 25, 2020 at 5:00 AM.
