Southeast Michigan Retail News: Sterling Heights Forever 21 Closing; Roseville, Novi, Auburn Hills Staying Open (UPDATED)

This post will look at retail in Roseville, Macomb County; Novi, Oakland County; and Auburn Hills, Oakland County, MI...and then some.

UPDATE: I am pleased to report that this blog post was the first place on the internet to report on the closings from a Southeast Michigan take, before even WDIV Local 4 reported on it.

10/30/2019 UPDATE: The Macomb Mall, Twelve Oaks Mall and Great Lakes Crossing Outlets locations won't be closing at all...though two previously-unannounced locations will now close instead. Scroll to the bottom for more info.

For this short blog post, we will announce some rather unfortunate Southeast Michigan retail news. On September 29, 2019, fashion retailer Forever 21 filed for bankruptcy protection, becoming the latest major retail chain to fall victim to the retail apocalypse. At the time, it operated 800 stores worldwide, including 15 in Michigan.

Today, Forever 21 released a list of the 178 stores that it plans on closing the doors to for good. In Michigan, two Grand Rapids area stores-Woodland Mall in Grand Rapids and Tanger Outlets in Byron Center-and three Southeast Michigan stores will close.

Not the best, but this was the only photo I could dig up...
The Southeast Michigan closures include stores at Macomb Mall in Roseville (which only opened back in July 2019), Twelve Oaks Mall in Novi and Great Lakes Crossing Outlets in Auburn Hills (pictured above). These stores are among Forever 21's largest, and those large-size stores are the ones being the primary targets in these closures, so it's not surprising....

except in the case of the Great Lakes Crossing store. This Forever 21 store was well signed as being a shortcut between the south center corridor of the mall and the north center corridor. This store's closure will cause some confusion for people wishing to use that shortcut, as they will run into padlocked entrances. There are, however, small and narrow corridors between those two larger corridors as well, and I have developed a workaround map:

And that's all we have today. Until next time....

CONTINUED UPDATE... A new, official closing list has been released today. Although the Roseville, Novi, Auburn Hills and Grand Rapids locations will remain open, the stores at Lakeside Mall in Sterling Heights and Genesee Valley Mall in Flint, both previously unlisted, will close instead, in addition to the previously-announced Byron Center closing.
Location: 32449 Gratiot Ave, Roseville, MI 48066, USA

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