Illinois store closings

With a cultural footprint that spans generations, Claire's is now navigating a tricky financial landscape. What’s next for this iconic retailer?

First, Joann Fabrics said that they'd be closing about 500 of their 800 total locations. Next, they reevaluated the situation and declared that all 800 would be closing. Then, Joann Stores really stepped in it by deciding that they would no longer accept gift cards, even though those cards had already been paid for. Now, scammers are going after people who are interested in Joann's going-out-of-business sales.

Another week, another announcement by yet another company that they're closing a bunch of locations in the interests of keeping the business alive.

After announcing they were closing all 800 stores across the nation (including Illinois), this chain immediately began launching going-out-of-business sales. Those sales are continuing, but the stores won't take your gift cards anymore--and many customers are really upset about it.

Earlier this year, a big mall-anchor store chain announced that they would be closing about 150 stores across the nation that were "underperforming," with a goal of closing 50 stores before the end of 2024. Now, as is the case so many times, a decision has been made to close more stores than originally expected this year.

Currently, 7-Eleven has over 100 stores in the Chicagoland area, part of the 315 locations overall throughout the state of Illinois. With the announcement that hundreds of 7-Eleven stores will be closed or sold off, the question is how many Illinois 7-Eleven locations will be shuttered permanently.

You may have thought that this particular discount store (famous for its blue-light specials) was already dead and buried, but it turns out that there was one location that was barely hanging in there after all the other locations had shut their doors forever. Now, that location is closing permanently, too.

Around a month after deciding to shut down about 300 of its stores, this major discount retailer declared bankruptcy on Monday of this week. Here's what it means for their remaining stores in Illinois.

Initially, Big Lots said that they'd be closing around 40 stores around the country in a move to keep the company afloat. Now come word that 40 was way too low of a number when it comes to store closings...the real number may be around 8 times that many closings.

Things can't be going well when a company announces the number of closings they'll be doing to keep the overall business alive, then turns around and adds a bunch of additional closings they weren't expecting to have to close.